Copenhagen: City of Danish Hotdogs and Glazed Almonds

From Amsterdam, our next stop was Denmark. In particular, the lively city of Copenhagen. This city is apparently the center of Europe's oldest monarchy and embodies a real laid-back spirit that would put even Aussies to shame. We decided to take the night train from Amsterdam since the train trip over was almost 14 hours. The night train constituted of not seats, but couchettes which are basically like extremely cramped sleeping beds. Good thing though is that we managed to sleep for (most of) the journey and even managed to meet a few crazy New Zealanders in the same carriage as us. Once we managed to get to Copenhagen, we walked out of the train psyching ourselves up since we knew that it would be colder than Amsterdam. Strangely enough though, it wasn't as cold outside and satisfied that we were wearing clothes sufficient enough for the climate there, we made our way out of the train station to the hostel. Funnily enough, the crazy New Zealanders we met in the carriage (trust me, these guys were crazy, they had some insane trip planned. by insane, they were doing like 7 cities in the space of 2 days) were staying in the same hostel. So after combining both mine and Chris's navigational skills with that of the New Zealand guys, we managed to find it.

We got to the hostel at about 11 in the morning. It worked out nicely since both of us slept half-decently on the train and we werent that tired. With that in mind, we decided that it was pointless just lounging around in the hostel and went off exploring the bustling city of Copenhagen. But first... food! Both of us were hungry, since the only thing we had eaten in the past 16 hours or so was some pringles, chocolate and a banana. Copenhagen is famous for its Danish Hotdogs. There's side stalls in like every main street selling these hotdogs. Apparently you havent truely experienced Copenhagen if you havent tried one of these hotdogs with everything on it. When the Danes say everything, they really do mean everything. This hot dog had about 6 different types of sauces on it, 4 of which were different types of mustard alone... it also had some fried onions (which were surprisingly crunchy) and to top it off, they slap some pickles on top of the hotdog too. Balancing this thing is an absolute mission, let alone attempting to eat it. Let's just say it was messy, but damn good. Now that we had eaten something, we were raring to go check out some of the sights. The first stop was The Rundetaarn, in english this basically translates to the round tower. It's a tall tower with no steps and has an observatory at the top, providing a 360 degree sweeping view of Copenhagen. It was a breathtaking sight and you could also see Sweden across the Baltic Sea which was quite something. Once we were finished with that, the next stop was something called The Rosenborg Slot. This was built by King Christian IV in the 17th century and basically acted as summer housing for the Danish Royals. Now though, it houses the Danish crown jewels and the treasury. Some of the weapons on display there were stunning. At this point, it was about 2pm and we still had time to do a lot more . We were progressing at a decent pace so we decided to knock over a museum. The Statens Museum for Kunst (State Museum for Fine Arts) displayed a wide collection of Danish and International art. There was no entrance fee for the museum and overall had some very unique artwork on display. It's a relief not having to pay to get into museums, a lot of our money is spent on museum entrance fees which can range from anywhere between 4-10 Euros. To get a more general picture, that's 20% of our daily budget! After finishing the museum, we still had time to check out Copenhagen's most famous attraction. Den Lille Havfrue (The Little Mermaid) statue. There is a statue to honour the fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen at the mouth of the harbour. Whilst making our way towards the stature (which was a bit of a trek), we managed to check out The Kastellet (a 17th century Danish fortress). Unfortunately, it was too dark to look at it in any great detail, so we decided to move on. The final sight for what was becoming a very successful day was to take a look at the Amaliensborg Palace. This comprises four huge mansions which serve as winter residences for the Danish Royal Family. We thought we could go in, but apparently it was too late, so we decided to head off back to the hostel and grab some dinner before hitting the sack.

Hoping that the second day in Copenhagen would be as successful as the first, we had some breakfast and then head back out into the city. The first thing on the list was to check out the Danish Royal Cathedral. We've seen already seen such a diverse array of Cathedrals and this was no exception. The next sight we wanted to go take a look at was the Marmorkirken (Marble Church). Now this Church was amazing. It was built in the 19th century, but what was truely amazing was its marble dome, which apparently is the 3rd largest marble down in Europe. A very interesting church indeed. The next stop was to go back to the Ameliensborg Palace and see if we could take a look inside. Luckily, our timing was great. So great in-fact that the Danish Royal Guards were doing a parade through the square. After watching the amusing display by the Royal Guard, we head into one of the four huge mansions to take a look inside. It housed some of the original furniture and rooms of older Danish Kings and royalties. The final stop for the day was the National Museum which had a vast collection of ancient Viking art along with other Danish historical artifacts. After another tiring but successful day, we decided to make our way back to the hostel.

The third day constituted of basically doing nothing. We had manage to finish most of Copenhagen in 2 days which was great. We took the third day to relax a bit and take it easy. We had been doing things rather quickly so we both needed some time to zone out. At about 1pm, we decided to head out and grab some lunch. We have this thing that we both must do in every city we visit. That is to try the local delicacy that the city has to offer. In the case of Copenhagen, it was both hot dogs and toasted, glazed almonds. Every time that we passed one of these side stalls that sold these almonds, we'd get that distinct mouth-watering smell. We couldn't leave Copenhagen before grabbing another hot dog (with everything) and two bags of glazed almonds. These almonds, once you eat one, you can't stop eating them. We knew that they were not the healthiest thing we could eat, but they were so good.

After ticking Copenhagen off the list, Sweden was calling us... in particular, Stockholm!

Stay tuned...

Cheers

Rishi