Saturday 8th October 2016, 8.59pm
Travelling to Denmark yesterday was uneventful and took up much of the day. My sister and I arrived into Copenhagen very late. Thankfully our hotel was close to the main station, which meant getting from the airport to there was a quick and painless process – one train with a 20 minutes ride, then a couple of minutes walk. My sister and I had booked a dorm at the Urban House Copenhagen. At least we thought we had. We were very relieved when we arrived and there was no one else there. (The next morning we could confirm that no one else would be there too. Phew.)
The room was a good size, with disconcertingly uneven floors. It was rather sparse, not particularly clean, but not dirty (there were suspicious marks on my bedding and a funny smell in the room, most likely coming from the bathroom) and quiet enough. The heating did not work. Outside the window there were some ‘gentlemens facilities’, and there was no dead bolt on the door, so it didn’t feel 100% safe, but it was OK. Atleast there were lockers in the room where we could place our sensitive documents – though we had to use our own padlocks to shut it. Finally, we made up our beds and settled down to sleep.
The next day we took the train to Østerport to explore Ameliaborg Palace and the marble church. The marble church was both closed and the tours of the tower cancelled, but we were able to see the changing of the guards at Ameliaborg, and then went into the palace itself to explore.
There was an excellent exhibition on the royal attic(s) showing all the typical junk the gets lost in the bowels of family houses – old clothes, appliances, crockery, linens, toys etc. – but all actually worth something because of their association (with royalty) and origins. Many of the items were accompanied by signs written in the first person/from the items point of view to explain the items history, which was oddly hilarious. It was a fun and playful exhibition that showed a very human side to royalty – the hoarding, the pictures of the royal children playing on their toys, a bright pink toiletries case, experimental art created by the royal household. After that we walked to see the little mermaid. She was a lot smaller than expected – it was actually a bit anti climatic. But she was beautiful, with lovely detailing. There were hoards of other tourists to compete with for photos though… of course.
We started to head back in the direction of our hotel, which although conveniently close to the main station, was actually far from many of the main tourist sites. On the way we explored Kastell island, which was pretty and interesting, and reminded me in its star shape of the Goryokaku Fort in Hakodate. We also went back to the Marble Church, which was open by then so we could have a look inside, even if we couldn’t go up the tower still. We carried on back to our hotel, just taking in the ordinary streets – the different architecture (to the UK), the many buildings with plants crawling over the walls, the cafes advertising fresh juice and coffee and all kinds of alternate diets. We passed the National Museum, and Tivoli Gardens, and found a small garden that was amazingly still in bloom, which we could look around in. Then we went back to the hotel, where we bought food at the Urban Bar. We had burgers with curly fries and it was delicious – although there wasn’t enough bacon on my burger. (I really like lots of bacon.) But it was significantly cheaper than any of the other places we had seen, so there was that too. (We had fully expected to starve whilst on this holiday, due to how expensive it is in Copenhagen.)
