The first city was Copenhagen. I had a 6am flight from Poznań that arrived at 7am, which unfortunately meant getting up around 2am. Transportation into the city was easy, as there are both a train line and a metro line that run from the airport to the Central Train station downtown. From there it was a 2-block walk to my hotel.
One thing you notice very quickly about Copenhagen is that they love their bikes. I got my first clue of this when I walked out of the Central Train station and saw this.
This is just part of the bike racks in front of the Central station. There are dedicated bike lanes that run next to the sidewalks throughout most of the city (that I saw), and a dedicated bike line through the center of the old town. The local English-language paper even had an article while I was there on a plan to build two "bicycle highways" that would improve bike usage from the suburbs by building dedicated routes that avoided the roads where possible so that bike riders would not need to stop at lights and stop signs.
There were a couple of downsides to Copenhagen that showed up immediately. The first is that the city is actually kind of dirty. There are cigarette butts all over the sidewalks (damn smokers having the pollute the ground as well as the air), and a bit more trash than you expect. Another issue was that there are homeless people literally sleeping on the streets in the morning. I passed a few on my way to my hotel, and grabbed this snapshot of the square in front of the town hall later that morning.
It's not nearly as bad as Mission Street in San Francisco, but again, it's a bit disappointing to someone like me who has always heard of "magical" Copenhagen.
But to counter that image, here is a quick picture of the inside of the town hall. It mostly serves as a public exhibition space (there were some artists exhibitions going on when I stopped by), but I also saw a wedding taking place there later that same day. It's a beautiful building, like nearly all of the older Copenhagen buildings.
I stayed at the Scandic Copenhagen hotel, which is very conveniently located just 2 blocks from the Central Station. The largest capacity theater in Scandinavia is just half block away (only 2 screens, but each screen has seating for about a thousand people if I remember the info correctly). And if you are on the correct side, you can see the planetarium out your window (as I was lucky enough to have). You can see a picture of my view below.
The bathrooms in the hotel are very small, the beds will be tight for 2, and there is a bit more noise from the halls than I would like. But all in all, it's not a bad hotel at all and the good outweighed the bad by quite a bit.
The city is full of parks. Just in the limited downtown area I was exploring I think I came across at least 8 or 9. This is a picture of the Rosenborg Castle, which is in the Kings Garden. The Crown Jewels and other national treasures are stored here, which is why there are armed soldiers wandering around.
But there other parks as well, including this park at the northern edge of the old town that I wandered around for a bit.
There is also tons of the shopping. Stroget, the main stopping street, is a mile-long pedestrian-only shopping way that runs all the way across the old town. Supposedly in 1962 it was the worlds first pedestrian street (at least that was the boast). It starts at the town hall square on one side and ends at the theater on the other side, with a few side streets that are pedestrian only as well for additional shopping pleasure. It gets VERY crowded though, and I would strongly recommend you keep any valuables in an inside pocket.
One thing I found interesting is that near the town hall entrance to Stroget is a Ripley's Museum. It brought back memories of a seeing the Ripley's Believe It or Not! TV show when I was younger. Strangely enough, someone seems to have re-created the idea lately as I have a seen a show on Discovery or TLC called "Weird, or What?". They may owe the Ripley's folks some money for ripping off the whole concept for their show. :)
Another of the odd shops that caught my eye was the name of the shop at the end of this little street. Yes, that really is the "Fish Kiss Spa". As you can see it was closed, but that has be the weirdest name for a spa I have ever seen.
Lastly, I'll close up with a just a couple of random pictures. I thought the fish below on a fountain was kind of cool.
And this giant anchor caught my eye near the harbor. I thought it was very unique, until I saw an almost identical one in Stockholm. :)
I'll probably add a couple of more posts here on Copenhagen, before moving on to Stockholm. Give me a few days to add the next one. I'll post the full set of pictures, plus a few others, over on my photo site when I am done with Copenhagen.
Enjoy!
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