Big Adventures, Little World

After spending the day at LEGOLAND we flew out of Billund that night and made our way to Copenhagen on a little 45 seat plane. It was pretty cool, but sometimes felt like it was going to fall apart at times. Luckily it didn’t and we touched down in Copenhagen and made our way to the hotel, settled in then went and found some food. We found a little pizza place just across the street, and took it back to the hotel where we relaxed after the early, early morning and the long day of LEGO fun!

A view along Copenhagen Harbour

The next day was a Monday, and from what we found, most things were closed on a Monday on Denmark. They seemed to have had the whole 3-day weekend thing sorted out. Maybe the UK or Australia will catch up soon. So seeing as just about everything we wanted to do was closed, we just went for a bit of a wander around the city to check out all the sites. Copenhagen really is a beautifully city. It is really quite nice just to wander around slowly and take it all in. The city is great, it all just seemed a little slow, and not too much was going on, but was still nice. We saw a lot of places we had seen the day before in LEGO form, like the Rosenborg Castle and the Copenhagen Harbour lined by all the different colour buildings. It was really cool walking by the boat filled canals and enjoying the fresh sea air.

Our hotel package included use of the next door spa, so that afternoon we went back and relaxed in the spa, sauna and steam room for what seemed like hours. It was probably a couple, which was nice considering how tired we had been. It was definitely a big plus of hotel, and included nice cool citrusy flavoured water, or coal water, which was supposed to purify your body, as well as some fruit.

The next day we had planned on going to check out the Tivoli Gardens which is the second oldest amusement park in the world. Unfortunately it didn’t open until the day after we left and we couldn’t even go in to wander through the gardens which I thought we could do so we had to settle for seeing it from the outside through the fences. We did then get to go on to the Carlsberg factory though which ended with beer, so it wasn’t all bad.

Carlsberg Brewery's collection of over 20000 beers

The Carlsberg factory is really quite good and they had a collection of over 20000 different beer bottles, all still full and sealed. I couldn’t find any Coopers in there though which was a bit disappointing, but you can send your own to them to be added apparently. We also got to check out all the old brewing equipment, as well as sculptures that belonged to Carl Jacobsen, the son of Carlsberg’s founder, and then the stables with the big Jutland dray horses as well as the horse drawn beer carts that used to be used for transporting the beer. After going through the factory we sat down in the restaurant and enjoyed our 2 free beers before we decided to make our way to the hotel and on to the spa again to relax for the rest of the afternoon.

Our last day in Copenhagen we went exploring through the city again and this time we even left the EU (European Union) by going to Christiania, which is a small community of about 1000 people and are a law unto themselves. It is a place where people squat in the buildings and drugs are openly sold in the streets, but as they have their own laws, and don’t regard themselves as being part of the EU, it is all ok. It is quite a strange place, but very interesting. It was quiet when we were there, and felt odd walking through the little community of theirs. The main rule while in Christiania is do not take photos, or otherwise if people catch you, they will take your camera and break it, and possible break you as well.

We had a pretty casual remainder of the day just wandering throughout the city and through some of the parks before it was time to head on back to London. It was a very relaxing holiday, which was quite a contrast to some of our other holidays where we are constantly doing one thing or another, so it was nice to just get away and relax for a few days in the beautiful city of Copenhagen.