Last week we visited Copenhagen for a few days. Well prepared, with some good addresses from colleague bloggers vaut le voyage and some travel guidebooks, we started our trip. The flight with Brussels Airlines takes about 1h20 minutes, than the subway takes you to the center of the town in 20 minutes. The subway is fully automatic, meaning there is no driver or drivercabine. You get a nice view if you sit at the front. Our hotel, Copenhagen Strand, was located at the water, just next to Nyhavn, a lovely and colorful harbor. The hotel and room were very nice, the breakfast in buffet was rich and delicious. The location of the hotel was very good, the subway only 10 minutes away, perfect basis to explore the city. You don’t really need the subway to see the city, you’re better off renting a bike. There was a bike rental place just around the corner of our hotel.
Nyhavn is the place where most tourists have a drink on one of the many terraces. There are many restaurants and bars, one afther the other. A lot of residents of the city and also visitors buy there drinks in a 7/11 shop and drink them along side of the water. We took the advice of our blogfriends, and went to Heering, where we had the “Frokost platter” with some small bites. The smoked salmon, herring, roasted beef and fried filet of fish tasted lovely in the sun, with a view on boats in the water and the colourful houses…
Another must see is Tivoli, an amusementspark right in the center of the city. A lot of residents have a year-pass en spend there evenings or free days in the park, dining in one of the many restaurants. Visitors have to buy an admission ticket to enter the park (about €13). If you want to go on the rides, you can buy tickets per ride or buy a multi-ride pass (€27), on top of your admission ticket. The park is one of the oldest amusementsparks in the world, founded in 1843! And it still has the oldest still working roller coaster dating back to 1914. It has as special construction with a driver sitting in the middle of the train who manually controls the breaks and the speed. At dusk the park gets a fairytale atmosphere, with beautiful lights everywhere. The park is open every day until 22h, sometimes even longer.
The first night in town, we ate in a restaurant in Tivoli with view over the water, and had a farely priced three-course meal (€40), which we enjoyed very much.
The second day, we did a huge walk through Christianshavn where old warehouses are turned into luxury appartments and little companies. It’s also the place where you can find Noma. On the edge of this part of the town, there is Christiania, founded by hippies in the seventies and still existing on the same basis. They have there own laws, pay no taxes and sell softdrugs in Pusherstreet. You can visit the whole domain by foot or by bike. Sometimes there are concerts you can see. You can also buy food or eat in one of the rebuild restaurants, at your own risk ;-).
We had an excellent lunch in the neighbourhood of Christianshavn in Café Oven Vande and in Faerge Caféen. Both places serve really good local food, for reasonable prices.
What should have been our culinary highlight of the trip, turned into something that left us with mixed feelings. Geist, located near Nyhavn is the place to be in Copenhagen, and is visited by the hip and trendy Danes. The menu card has different small dishes. You can order as many as you like. It’s recommended to choose 4, to have an overview of the danish cuisine and not to leave your table still feeling hungry.
The first dish we ordered was a tartare of lobster with yoghurtdressing and hibiscus and was really disappointing. The lobster was mixed into a mash and smeared on the plate, together with a lot of yoghurt. You didn’t taste any lobster at all, it could have been any kind of raw fish. Annemieke didn’t get anything better, she got the scallops with curry and endives. There was about half of a scallop cut into tiny pieces. The taste was all endives and curry. So also a taste problem here.
We gave it a second chance and the second plate (heart of lamb with shitake and turbot with fennel ravioli) was much better and flavors were more balanced. We then ordered a third plate, which was ok as well: beef with tomato and crab with patato and herb butter.
For dessert, they were really surprising, in a positive way. The presentation of the white chocolate tarte with passion fruit seemed strange at first. It was like they had forgotten the filling. But the filling was actually a tiny layer at the bottom of the tarte.
Annemieke was also very impressed about the amazing combination of wasabi and a caramel toffee. I took a second dessert, the air in air in air tiramisu, a tiramisu reinvented, although the taste wasn’t very good, you couldn’t really taste anything, too much air. With our coffee and tea, we got cotton candy, which was surprising and nice!
For this eating fest we payed a small fortune, 1650 Danish Krones, which is about €221… Leaving the restaurants we had mixed feelings. On the one hand they had excellent dishes, and on the other hand really lousy ones. Also the fact that plates where served in 5 minutes after you had just ordered them was also strange.
A couple of month ago, we met 2 people from Copenhagen, who were visiting Bruges. We kept in touch with Tina and Arne, and they showed us around on our last night in the city. They took us out to dinner to taste one of the local dishes. Stegt Flaesk is bacon with the pigskin still on it, served with boiled patatos and parsley sauce. The bacon is fried for a long time and is so crispy that you have to break it and eat it with your hands. Afterwards we had a local beer in one of the bars that brew their own beer. It was really nice to meet people in Bruges and than see them back again in there hometown.
Copenhagen is really worth a visit, but best in spring or summer. In the winter it gets dark at 15h! Also take into account that you pay very high prices for alcohol, a beer costs about €7 or €8. Rent a bike to discover the city and it’s many beautiful parks and don’t forget the little mermaid!
When you visiting Copenhagen, did you buy Copenhagen card ? is that worth to buy Copenhagen card for 3 days ?
Thanks a lot for your information.
No, we didn’t buy the Copenhagen Card, it was cheaper to buy tickets for the metro and to rent a bike. When you want to visit a lot of museums then is it better to buy the card I suppose… Have a nice trip!