Norwegian Getaway Review: Part 4 – Copenhagenfeatured

Before we arrived in Copenhagen, I wasn’t sure how we’d fill the three days before our visit. We didn’t know much about Copenhagen beforehand, and Denmark, while a beautiful, culturally rich country, isn’t at the forefront of European history.

But when I woke up on our final full day in Copenhagen, I couldn’t imagine spending any less time in Copenhagen. In fact, I was worried we wouldn’t be able to get to everything we wanted to visit. But this was vacation after all, and before we even left the hotel, we agreed that we didn’t have to see and do everything now…there’s always the next time (especially if airfare to Scandinavia continues to trend down). Instead of rushing through everything, the goal for the day was simply to enjoy ourselves and leave ourselves the flexibility to change our plans if we wanted to.

Our first stop of the day was at another food market, this time Torvehallerne, the Glass Market. Torvehallerne is quite the opposite of Copenhagen Street Food at Papirøen. It’s located in the middle of the city, right off Nørreport, and its offerings are a little more refined than the culinary craziness that happens on Papirøen. There’s some retail booths, as well, where you can browse and pick up some gifts, but we came with a purpose: Grød.

Grød is a cafe serving up traditional Danish porridge. They have a few set combinations on the menu, or an option to make your own. Mom and Stephanie went with the pre-set combinations and I opted to make my own – a base of oats, quinoa and chia made with almond milk and any three toppings I wanted. I stayed away from the traditional options and went with hazelnuts, berry compote and Valrohna chocolate drops and my small bowl was filled with rich, gooey breakfast goodness that was so good it should have been a dessert. It was super affordable, too – my small bowl of porridge translated to somewhere around $6 or $7.

I really enjoyed the food markets over traditional sit down meals for a few reasons: more options, fewer formalities and more affordable options. I’m not sure if I mentioned it, but everything in Copenhagen is pretty pricey. It took me a few days to understand that the reason why prices are higher here is because a 25% VAT tax is added to all purchases, and if I took that out, prices were more in line with other countries we’d visited.

It started to drizzle as we left Torvehallerne and we popped into a nearby Starbucks to plot out our next move. Before we left home, I was concerned about the availability of wifi in Copenhagen just because I had no idea if or how widespread coverage would be, and because I’d downgraded my international plan for this visit based on how little I used it the year before. Thankfully, my worries were for naught – free wifi is just about everywhere in Copenhagen and the moments where we had no connectivity were rarer than the moments where we did. The most reliable hot spots we found throughout the city belonged to Starbucks, Joe and the Juice (which must get some kind of kickback from the Danish government because they are everywhere!) and, believe it or not, 7-Eleven.

We realized we were a short bus ride away from Rosenborg Castle and decided that would be our next stop. Rosenborg Castle was built in the 1600s for King Christian IV. It hasn’t been used as a residence since the early 1800s, but the rooms are remarkably well-preserved and, even better for us, the site wasn’t crowded on the Monday morning we visited, and we were able to tour in peace, at our own pace, without being crowded in with others.

After we toured all of the rooms, we headed outside to walk along the pond and through the garden. The gray clouds and rain were disappearing into some warm sunlight and the castle made the perfect backdrop for some quiet reflection in the garden.

We planned to visit Amalienborg (home to many of the recent Danish Royals), but we put that on hold to visit Sct. Peder’s Bageri, a renowned bakery nearby that was known for some killer cinnamon rolls. I’ll vouch for them – they did not disappoint!

Satiated on carbs and frosting, we set out towards City Hall and walked around for a bit, stopping into a 7-Eleven to poach their wifi when we needed directions to our next stop, Freetown Christiania.

Christiania is like a community within a community. The town was formed by hippies who squatted in some military barracks in 1971, turning the abandoned site into their own community. The town is not governed by the Danish government, or really at all. There are very few things that are outlawed or frowned upon: no hard drugs, no pictures on Pusher Street (where hash and marijuana are openly sold and smoked), no cars, and no other rules. It’s very much live and let live. There are shops and restaurants and dozens of people live their lives out in this community. It was absolutely fascinating to me.

Mom was getting a little freaked out by the open use of mind altering substances, so we hopped on a bus back towards Gammel Strand, where we could figure out our next stop in front of, you guessed it, another 7-Eleven.

We tried to make it to Amalienborg, but apparently it closes at 4:00 pm on Mondays and we were about an hour late on that one, so we hopped on a bus to at least see it while we were there. The dome capped top is just stunning and I could only imagine how beautiful the palace is on the inside. Another bullet point on the next time list.

None of us were sure what to do after Amalienborg. We were approaching the evening hours and we were torn between wanting to see more and going back to the hotel to get ready for embarkation the following morning. We hopped on a bus back towards the train station and made a compromise: instead of eating dinner at a third market, we’d grab a quick bite at Pasta du Nord, an organic pasta restaurant inside the train station where pasta is made from scratch, upwards of 80% of their ingredients are organic and where the menu is centered on about five simple dishes.

We walked off our dinner across the street at Tivoli, which Mom hadn’t visited yet. We took the shortcut in to take her right to the tulip garden (which was even more stunning on our second visit!). I guess it was a live music night because the lawn was packed with people on loungers, and the smaller stages featured some diverse performances (including a really interesting country music one!). We sat out and watched the amusement park around us. It was the perfect end to our last full day.

When we couldn’t avoid going back to the hotel any longer, we headed back to the bus stop to catch the 34 back to the hotel, where we packed, we watched a lot of CNN and some Scandinavian version of Jersey Shore before drowning ourselves in last minute embarkation and port research. It felt like our trip had already gone on for forever and simultaneously had never really started. I guess we were living in the perfect middle for the next few days.