Treks and travels: Copenhagen, Denmark

My visit to Copenhagen was unexpected. It was never in the list of places “to be seen”. But unexpected events do happen in life and few of them are for good. One such event was my visit to Copenhagen. I and Prashanjith were looking at the places to visit during weekend. The places that we had in mind did not fit into our scheme of things. Either the travel was too expensive or flights/trains were not available at convenient times. Copenhagen fitted the bill perfectly.

There was no direct flight from Eindhoven, the town we were staying in Netherlands. So we had to travel to Amsterdam by train and catch a flight. When we entered Schipol airport, the status of our flight was set to “boarding”!! The terminal was far away. We ran and ran… had to cross security which took its sweet time. But finally, we were able to successfully board the Norwegian flight to Copenhagen.

Copenhagen was completely different from Budapest, the town I visited previous weekend. The “wealthy touch” was easily felt. Everything was expensive in Copenhagen. The train pass was so expensive that we had to only travel in train for entire day to recover its cost!! We ended up buying individual tickets.

It took five minutes to reach the station Tarnby. We were in for a mild shock when we got down from the train. It was very cold but that was expected. There is no soul to be seen anywhere!! People were not seen even on the road. It took some time for us to realize the feel of the Scandinavian city. Finding our hotel “Copenhagen Go” was not difficult as it was just opposite to the metro station. But what was difficult was to accept the size of the room. I had paid half the price for a room double the size in Budapest. Ah!! I will stop comparing prices of Eastern Europe and rich Scandinavia. Denmark is expensive. Full stop.

A small surprise awaited us next morning. We went to the metro station and looked for the ticket counter. We went up and down several times looking for ticket counter in vain. Then we realized that the only option to buy ticket was to use automatic ticket vending machines. I feel that cost of keeping human beings to sell ticket must be too huge in human resource starved country. There were very few stations that had manned ticket counters.

One of the first things we saw in Copenhagen was Copenhagen Town hall. In front of it was a large square surrounded by several nice looking buildings.

We then went to Christansborg Palace. It is the seat of Danish Parliament, houses Prime Minister’s Office and Supreme Court. Few parts are still used by monarchy.

Hence it is more of Palace complex than a single building. Public are allowed at some places and guided tours are also available.

From Christansborg Palace, we could see a canal. The place was also starting point for canal boating tours. We decided to try for the same. It was good as we got to know lot of details about Copenhagen.

The opera seen from the boat. Looks like newly constructed building.

The canal opens to sea where Danish Navy has its base. Lot of naval ships can be seen from the boat.

The boats docked on the canal at Christiansvahan. The king wanted to create a city with canals very similar to Amsterdam and hence he asked the people to settle down in this island.

We got down from the boat at “Our Saviours Church”. The spire on top of the church is an attraction.

People are also allowed to go to the top. The steps are all made of wood. It is also very narrow and steep. One has to give way for the people coming from opposite direction.

The view from top of the Church is worth the climb.

By then it was lunch time and we were hungry. As we could not find any hotels we decided to go back to Town hall where we had seen a “Burger King”. What I liked was they were advertizing “Vegeterian burger”. My food was taken care in Copenhagen!!

We took the boat again as we wanted to go to Little Mermaid at the far end of the city. There was a goof up as the boat went very near to the place but did not stop!! After one hour of boat ride, we came back to the same point. We then decided to walk to Little Mermaid.

On the way to Little Mermaid we visited Amalienborg Palace, the home of Danish royal family.

It is a group of four buildings around the square. At the center of the square is the equestrian statue of King Frederick V.

Near the Palace is Frederick’s church.

Finally we reached Little Mermaid at the harbour!!

True to its name, it was a very small statue on a rock.

Near Little Mermaid was castle area. Beautiful place!!

It’s autumn time!!

As it darkened, we walked back to Town hall to have some food at “Burger King”. Then we just strolled on the streets of Copenhagen.

The clock had turned back by 1 hour. That meant we had an extra hour which we spent in sleeping!! We expected chaos due to the change in time but business was as usual in the city. No confusions at all. I think people are used to the change in timing that happens during autumn and spring.

Rosenborg castle was the place we visited that day.

The castle is surrounded by nice garden.

Near the castle was botanical garden.

A beautiful lake in the garden.

The glass house in Botanical garden.

By now we had seen everything we had in mind. Few more hours were left for our return flight. Our trip was not yet over. We decided to visit Sweden before that!!