You say Tomato I say Tomarto, or whatever, Yes – We are in the big Danish Capital city and splendid it is too!
We arrive by train (and a damn plush train, no bog standard English train and no dust cloud when you sit down) into the central train station.
Once out the door we can hear the screams, some petrified and some of enjoyment, from the adjacent Tivoli amusement park.
We walk straight into the centre of Copenhagen and head for the Round Tower (25DKK entry) for a better view of the city.
The view from up here is brilliant, you can see all the way out to the Orseund bridge, linking Denmark to Sweden as well as all the rest of the city. One of the most prolific things about Copenhagen is the number of Spires and Domes, and their different styles, although all are similar, none is the same. There is a gold and brown spiral, a spire that has many “vines” appearing to grow up it, domes of all different shapes, from onion domes to simple hemispheres and from matt black to copper green.
We descend down the roundtower’s spiral staircase then spiral ramp, passing by the astronomical clock, for this is the original purpose of the tower, as an observatory for the university.
As we come out of the cool darkness of the tower we realise that there is definitely a vibrant buzz in the town and head off on the scent of some May Day festivities.
Our walk around Copenhagen takes us to one of the town’s main squares where there is a dance show on. We grab a beer and sit down to watch the goings-on, but swiftly move on when a weird hippie dancer takes to the stage and starts walking around flashing her bra to everyone. (well ok we hung around a bit to see if she would take anything else off, then left when she didn’t).
Our next stop on our walking tour took us across the bridge into the university district of the city and there was an altogether different feel to the city. We had gone from the cosmopolitan and trendy cafes, shops and bars of main town Copenhagen to the trendy alternative bars and shops, but this place was no less inviting. Stages were being set up for events later on in the day so we decided to head back here later on and explore the rest of the city first.
Copenhagen is surrounded by canals, forming many different islands, forming many different ways to get lost, stuck, trapped and leading to some half hour walks just to find the same way off the island as you came onto it. After we figured this out we were much more careful with our routes and nervously headed out to the freetown of Christianshavn.
Old vs New.
It is often a mark of how comfortable a city is with its heritage for it to be able to put a brand new, unapologetically modern building right next to an old church and it takes a very good architect to make it work. Apparently Denmark posses both of these criteria and managed to get away with buildings that wouldn’t look out of place on the moon parked up next to buildings that appear in history books.
As we walk around we notice that the warm afternoon has brought out a relaxed atmosphere across the town and, as little rowing boats containing guitarists nod hello to us we head for an Ice Cream at a free Hans Christian Anderson festival.
The next part of our route takes us through some of the main parks in Copenhagen, where yet more people are enjoying the fine weather, up to the Citadel and back down to the Royal Apartments.
By this time the evening is wearing on and we decide to head back to the university district to enjoy the music.
We were justly rewarded. Lively scenes, cheap beer, hippies and a relaxed atmosphere led to a thoroughly enjoyable evening of folk, jazz and weird music.
Wearily we headed back to our train and back to Ringsted, tomorrow is Sweden and it has a lot to live up to.
Photos below, please leave a comment and share if you enjoyed.
