Dining with the Danes

Photos can be found at http://www.globalregulators.com/gallery/copenhagen

So it was time for us to visit a Scandinavian country, and what better place to choose then the one which has recently adopted an Aussie as their Princess. I suppose more recently, Denmark has been in the news for all the wrong reasons, with this whole cartoon controversy going on. The weather report before we left had told us that we might get maybe one day of sunshine - we were extremely grateful to get a weekend full of sun. It certainly helped with us taking picture perfect photos, and it probably helped the locals be just that extra bit friendly with us - everyone there was so polite and so ready to help us with directions and suggestions on where to go.

With the weeks leading up to this trip, discussions were surrounding whether we would have enough things to see and do during the weekend there, and in the end, we didn't have to worry, as there was plenty of activities both indoors and outdoors to keep us busy.

Very glad to get the early flight on the friday, leaving London at around 4pm for arrival at around 7pm. Once we had checked into our hotel (btw, it was supposed to be a 3 star hotel, but it seemed to have the complete lack of a shower - there was a shower head above the sink, with a big drain below the sink and then a shower curtain that supposedly stopped water from hitting the toilet. we weren't convinced), we headed straight off to the Latin quarter for some food and some entertainment.

Getting your bearings in Copenhagen isn't too difficult - it seems like a fairly well laid out city, and everything is fairly close. Being the 'active' young folk that we were, pretty much walked everywhere during the whole weekend. I was a fan of the latin quarter - mainly containing a bunch of restaurants, and then bars/coffee shops. I really liked how a lot of the bars were inset underground, so you really had to bend down to look through the window to work out what kind of place it was.

Saturday, we knew that first on the list was going to be the little mermaid. The park that we went through to get to the little mermaid certainly made it all worthwhile. After the mermaid, it was a hurried walk over to the royal palace to check out the changing of the guard (think it occurs everyday at midday) which was quite interesting. The Nyhavn Canal is one of those 'postcard' locations with all its brightly coloured buildings playing host to a series of restaurants and bars. It would certainly be a bustling area come summer time. We ended up having lunch and dinner along this strip - sampling the traditional Danish "smorrebrod" (an open-faced sandwich) for lunch.

During the afternoon, we headed over to Christianshavn, to check out the free town. Free town is a self contained town, which mainly consists of the junkies and other sorts of suspect characters. It does mean that they basically hang out there and don't need to venture into the other parts of Copenhagen, which for the rest of the city, probably keeps the crime levels down.

Sunday morning came - I was certainly feeling the effects of the drinks from the night before. For some reason though, Lisa and Chico left it to me to decide what we should do for the day. Executive decision was made, and we went to visit a palace out of town. The lonely planet described it as 'straight out of a fairytale' , and we were certainly not disppointed once there. It was basically a 40 min train ride out of Copenhagen to Helirod, which is up further north. The train ride turned out to be pretty cool in itself (The Danes know how to make a nice big commuter train comfortable), with plenty of snow along the countryside - we even getting to see guys on a lake playing ice hockey. The palace, which is actually a museum, is surrounded by a lake - and with this time of year, it was frozen over. As we were approaching it, the lonely planet was spot on and there were plenty of photos taken as we took it all in (Oh, and Chico and me competing for who could get the best 'artistic' shot).

Two thumbs up from me - only downside was that we did miss out on a few things that weren't open during winter (Tivoli gardens and climbing a church in Christianhaven which provides a perfect view of the entire city).