Copenhagen – mermaids, Vikings and Hamlet

Last year I travelled to Copenhagen with one of my friends and found a very modern city with a whole load of history to go with it. Its a city that a lot of cruises go from and also visit so I thought it was worth doing a bit of a write up!

First things first, it is Scandinavia so we went with the expectation that things might be a little expensive and Copenhagen didnt disappoint but was it ridiculously more than UK prices? Not always and not across the board, the public transport was more reasonable than certain big cities in the UK and the food wasnt outlandishly expensive compared to say Japan or from what Ive heard Iceland!

We did a Easyjet flight from Luton so had a fairly nightmarish early start, that aside on arrival in Copenhagen the airport is very well connected with the city by the city subway. The hotel we stayed at (the Adina, which is absolutely ideal for a cruise departing Copenhagen was actually out very near to the cruise port, you could see some of the ships out of the front door so for that reason I can tell you the cruise port is a little bit out of the city as well!

There was a German Aida ship in at the time and we noticed everyone had come off and hired bikes so we went and investigated and found the little mermaid statue (one of the main sights to see in Copenhagen apparently). It was a nice statue but a little small and not terribly impressive, definitely not a reason to go to Copenhagen by itself unless you are a massive Hans Christian Andersen fan!

Around the corner from that we found the source of the bikes, much like a lot of major cities now you can hire a bike by the hour and the ones in Copenhagen have a built in GPS to help you navigate around. We got setup and decided to cycle into the city and ended up in Nyhavn, another of the main tourist attractions. This place was absolutely buzzing, there were little market stalls setup and a big outside dining area where we went and got lunch, fish and chips Danish style no less! The colourful buildings and relaxed feel make this a great place to hang out, have a beer or a meal and people watch.

We worked our way from here over to Christiania which is a commune within the city of Copenhagen, en route we passed the Church of our Saviour which has a really pretty spire which has a corkscrew around it so is quite unique. Freetown Christiania was formed in 1971 and has had frequent run ins with the law since (in fact it was closed down temporarily just after we returned due to some fairly dodgy characters in the drug trade who had worked their way in apparently). The whole place is like a big art experiment, it seems a fairly peaceful place that celebrates art and a somewhat different way of living. There are some darker aspects to it but the place is also just full of people who want to live a different way and I found a lot of the artwork and live music quite inspiring so its worth going here for a look around. After that we went over to Tivoli which is another of Copenhagen’s main attractions, personally I found the main attraction the theme park a little dated, although that might be the point in a nostalgic sort of way. I did however really like the gardens and reckon it would be a great place to go and watch live music and performance which they frequently do here, there was a jazz performance up on stage whilst we were there so we took a bit of a breather to suck up the atmosphere.

The next day we had decided to go out of Copenhagen itself so headed to a town called Roskilde which was on the main train line out of the city about 40 minutes away and relatively small cost. Roskilde is famous as the home of the annual Roskilde music festival which has some massive bands performing every year and is quite well known. We however went there to go and see some Viking culture at the Viking Ship museum  https://www.vikingeskibsmuseet.dk/en/

They had information here on building Viking ships as well as replicas of traditional Viking boats you could go on outside as well as demonstrations on boat building and run workshops where you can do a bit of boat building yourself! They also have the option to go out on a traditional Viking boat in the summer months, all really cool, especially for kids or big ones! The inside museum was also really interesting as had a lot of history, some of which was relevant to a lot closer to home about Viking raids and so on. There are also reconstructed Viking boats from back in the day inside as well and as if that wasnt enough the whole building looks out onto a fjord which is really scenic and gives context to things! I would imagine going out on the boats early morning would be very atmospheric and you could really get the feel of being a Viking! From there we headed up to Kronborg castle which as the inspiration for Shakespeares Hamlet all in easy reach on public transport!

So Copenhagen and surrounds all in all an amazing place to start or end a cruise or just go to have a look around in general!