A Day In Copenhagen

This is part of my 18,000 Miles For Good series.  I hope you’ll stay tuned for the rest of the posts:

• Getting Started On An 18,000 Mile 5-Day Journey
• Turkish Airlines Lounge At Washington Dulles
• SAS Scandinavian Airlines From IAD to CPH (Washington Dulles to Copenhagen)
• Touring UNICEF In Copenhagen:  Getting Ready For Delivery
• Riding The Metro In Copenhagen: An Easy Way To Get To and From The Airport
• A Day In Copenhagen
• Getting The Right Medicine For A Trip To Africa
• Norwegian Premium From CPH to JIB (Copenhagen to Djibouti)
• Dropping Off Humanitarian Aide In Djibouti
• A Day In Djibouti
• Qatar Airways JIB-DOH-DFW

As I mentioned in my previous post about riding the Metro, I bought a 12USD pass for 24 hours that served me well.

The ride from my hotel near the airport (Park Inn Copenhagen Airport) to the Norreport station took about 20 minutes.  Ascending from the station, I was greeted with a recurring theme I’d see throughout the city.  There are a lot of bikes.

It was less than a 10-minute walk from the station to The Donut Shop.  Unfortunately, I didn’t bother to check online whether it was open beforehand.  Thankfully, it wasn’t too far out of my way to find out that Sunday is not donut day in Copenhagen.  If you plan on making the trek, note that they normally don’t open until 10 am.

I decided to see if the Dunkin Donuts nearby at the Kobenhavn station was any different from the US Dunkin Donuts. They weren’t exactly the same as the US version, but pretty close. For those that read the Mister Men books as children, my kids got a kick out of the Mr. Happy donut.

I also found an interesting little pasta place in the train station. Called Pasta du Nord, they served fresh, organic pasta made-to-order. This was a quick-service restaurant with about ten tables. A plate of pasta was as cheap as 70 DKK (or about 10 USD). The portion of pasta carbonara I got was pretty sizable for the price. The pasta was good, the bacon tasty and crunchy even if the sauce wasn’t really a carbonara. Well worth ten bucks.

The bones of the old station are still there, including the stained glass windows. Where people likely used to congregate to wait for trains is now a sea of McDonald’s, juice bars and other retailers.

Later on, I went back downtown to meet a friend at the Little Mermaid. On the way, I broke one of my cardinal rules in an effort to try to reach my destination a bit sooner. I hopped on a bus. I’m not a big fan of buses, mostly because they don’t normally have dedicated bus lanes. Getting stuck in traffic on a bus strikes me as a waste of time if I can use a subway and do some walking instead.

Traffic wasn’t the foil this time. Rather, a fairly crazy bus driver. After I got onboard I stood about 5 feet behind his chair in the aisle. He stopped the bus at a traffic light, turned around and started gesturing in my direction. It took me a few minutes to realize he wasn’t mad at me. I figured it out right when he stood up, turned around and yelled at the girl behind him not to kick the wall in front of her seat. Oooookay.

At the next scheduled stop, the bus driver pulled up to the sign beside the bus shelter. People lined up at the door and he turned to stare at them. He waited a minute or so then, with a line of people right at the closed door of the bus, he drove away. The driver skipped at least the next two stops because that second one was mine. He then drove about another mile (in the wrong direction for me) before finally pulling up at a larger bus stop. That seemed like a good time to get off and end my experiment with buses.

We were supposed to meet a Little Mermaid, a tourist stop.  I wish I’d had time to explore Kastellet, which is a star-shaped fortress from the 17th century nearby.  After a long walk, I met up with my friend Charlie and spent the required 30 seconds to get a picture of the Little Mermaid before we headed to dinner.

Undaunted by my previous local donut shop fail, we selected a local restaurant nearby that got good reviews. We arrived after a 15-minute walk to find out, ahem, that it’s closed on Sundays.

We walked a few blocks and picked a local restaurant. It was a decent, if not spectacular meal. After that, we walked to Tivoli to meet up with another group of friends. As best I can describe it, Tivoli is an amusement park in the middle of Copenhagen. I wish I had more time to explore it. Definitely a place I would bring my kids to!

After a late-night snack with friends we all piled into taxi cabs and headed to our hotel.

If you’ve read this far, I’ll save you the suspense on our hotel. We stayed at the Park Inn hotel just a short distance from the airport. It was pretty darn horrible. You can use Club Carlson points to redeem an award night here. I guess if you had expiring Club Carlson points with no other possible use (pretty much the situation we were in), you might be able to justify staying there once. Armed with the knowledge of the hotel now, I wouldn’t stay there again even under the same circumstances. Feel free to ask questions if you want more specifics.

The Final Two Pennies

Copenhagen is an easy city to navigate via train/metro. I’m hoping it’s just the one psychotic bus driver. There’s plenty of waterfront to walk along for beautiful views. And, bikes. There are a ton of bikes in the city. I honesty don’t know enough about the city to gauge how many days you’d want to spend there. I’ve been there twice, both times for about a day and managed to find new attractions to explore each time.

It’s an enjoyable city that should be on your list for future exploration.

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