Posted By Sarah Mummy on Apr 24, 2018 | 4 comments

We recently got home from a lovely break in Copenhagen, in Denmark. Here’s just a few of the things we got up to.

Tivoli Gardens

Tivoli Gardens is a kind of funfair/ theme park in the heart of Copenhagen. As you step out of the railway station, literally the first thing you see is a rollercoaster.

It is old-fashioned and quirky and very beautiful. From my point of view, it’s just a shame it has rides! I’m not a fan of theme parks or funfairs, but my daughter loves them SO MUCH.

Entrance is 110 krone each, which is about £11. You pay 230k for a wristband for unlimited rides. You can also buy individual ride tickets for 30k, but as some rides cost three or even four tickets, that’s fairly pointless.

A lot of the rides terrify me. They go very high and very fast, which is the best thing in the world for my younger two kids. There is a very high swing ride, a very high drop, a number of rollercoasters (although they are tame compared to Alton Towers) and a horrible aeroplane thing that spins round all over the place while extremely high off the ground.

Luckily there are also beautiful gardens. And at night the whole place is lit up. And it stays open until MIDNIGHT at weekends. It really is worth going along at night (you can get re-entry) to see the lights, plus the queues are almost non-existent. My kids did as many rides in the evening as they’d done in the daytime.

There are lots of places to eat, from your standard burgers and chips to very posh restaurants. There is even a Wagamama (which is also accessible from outside the park) – result!

Despite the fact that I don’t like theme parks, I have to agree with my kids that Tivoli Gardens is a must-see, whether or not you like rides.

(Tivoli Gardens isn’t open in the winter months. When we went to Copenhagen at the start of April it had literally opened up three days earlier.)

Nyhavn

Nyhavn is picture postcard Copenhagen and it has to be seen, even if it is only to take pictures. It’s a row of colourful buildings (mainly restaurants and bars) along the quayside.

Generally, I’m the photographer in the family, but just sometimes we come across something we all want to photograph and we start to get a bit competitive with our photography. Nyhavn is one of those places. (And my younger son ALWAYS wins the family photography competitions, he has such a good eye for detail and composition.)

The Little Mermaid

You can’t go to Copenhagen without visiting The Little Mermaid. For such an iconic statue, she is surprisingly small and understated. She sits on her rock at Langelinje Pier in Copenhagen Harbour and welcomes droves of tourists wanting to be photographed with her, and trying to avoid other tourists photobombing their pictures. Apparently it’s lucky to touch her boob, but when we visited the tide was too low so there was no way we were reaching her boobs!

Cycling

Bikes are a great way to get around in Copenhagen and a lot of the locals cycle. You can read more about cycling in Copenhagen here.

Parkrun

If you enjoy running, why not do a parkrun in Copenhagen? There are actually three in the city. You can read more about parkrun in Copenhagen here.

Day trip to Malmo, Sweden

Although Copenhagen is the capital of Denmark, it is actually in the far south eastern corner of the country and far closer to Sweden than the centre of Denmark. You can get a train from Copenhagen to Malmo in Sweden in just half an hour and they run every 10 minutes. My eldest was keen to visit another country, so we got the train across the Malmo Bridge to Sweden for the day.

Malmo is a beautiful and quirky city. Copenhagen is beautiful and quirky itself, but they are beautiful and quirky in different ways.

My eldest particularly wanted to see the Turning Torso, which is the tallest building in Scandinavia, and I had to agree with him that it is a very impressive sight.

If you’ve got the time, a trip across the bridge to Malmo is well worth doing.

Danish money

We’d been warned that things were expensive in Denmark, but not everything was. There are approximately 10 krone to the pound and every now and then we would get confused by the prices because something that was 3k could almost be £3 and we had to remind ourselves it was only really 30p. The first convenience store we located was astronomically expensive. It sold 1.5 litre bottles of water for 31k or two for 49.75. The next day we found a Lidl where a 1.5 litre bottle of water was 3k! We were so unsure of the prices that we didn’t dare buy too much at once in case we’d calculated wrong, but we really hadn’t!

When I look at what I’ve written, it feels like we didn’t do that much or see that much in Copenhagen. I’m sure we could have fitted more in if we’d tried, but we had teenage sleep patterns to contend with and were happy to take everything at a fairly slow pace, with A LOT of walking,