Hej:First Day in København

Copenhagen Airport

In planning my trip to Ireland, I figured that while I was there, I should take advantage of the proximity of Dublin to so many other great European cities. While I studied abroad, I managed to see a small snippet of five other countries: Edinburgh (Scotland), Brussels (Belgium), Paris (France), London (England), and Madrid (Spain). In reality, I could've (and should've) ventured to more of a variety of places, and even to more countries since it would've been so much cheaper and I had so much time.

But now that I'm limited to two weeks of vacation and needing to start in the US as a base, I needed to really utilize my time that I was spending. So there were talks of a mini-trip, one or two countries over the course of 3-4 days (I wasn't going to give up too much of my time spent in Ireland). And luckily Shannon was all for this idea, having a goal of hers being to visit as many countries as she is old (24 countries by the time she's 24) and she was almost falling behind. (My fact about Shannon that I tell EVERYBODY is that she's been to every continent, that includes Antarctica). So we set out to find the best option for a short break and landed on Copenhagen, since Denmark was on her list as a place she had never been. So let's get to the mini-trip shall we...

We were already enthralled and impressed by Copenhagen when we landed at the airport. Beautifully designed chairs and hardwood flooring (not to mention the famed hot dogs have a stand before customs).

We took the what I suppose you would call the metro, to the stop closest to our hostel and I proceeded to walk us in the wrong direction. In case you were unaware, Danish is a confusing language. Also getting lost will become a common theme during this vacation, along with hot dogs and hurting feet.

We eventually figured out where our hostel was, Generator Copenhagen, and FYI, it's not that hard to find. I would highly recommend a stay at Generator, I know they're spotted around Western Europe (Dublin, Barcelona, Berlin, etc.) and they're some of the nicest that I've stayed at with ample sized storage for your luggage under your beds, reading lights, key cards, outlets at every bed, and a really good breakfast for not very much. The only downside we encountered during our stay was an odd (and seemingly angry) couple who were in the bunks across from ours and the massive school group that was there but neither particularly hindered us aside from lack of seating and needing to be quiet at odd times just to be considerate.

As we arrived mid-afternoon, we had hoped to get a hot dog from DØP before trying to tackle one of the sights. Little did we realize that Mondays are days on which things tended to be closed or closed early on, so we ended up missing the infamous hot dogs, but did make it just in time to visit the Rundetaarn (round tower), which gave us spectacular views of the city, and some history before we ended up settling for shwarma close to Tivoli (this was our first debacle with using the Danish Kroner, it's hard okay?)

While the views from the top were amazing, the highlight of the day for me was walking down Stroget (the main pedestrian shopping area), and looking to my left to see my beloved waffles from Brussels. We had continued walking to dinner, but OBVIOUSLY we stopped on our way back to the hostel and I was over the moon! I believe my Instagram photo caption referred to the waffle as "the love of my life".

I'll leave you with a picture of the love of my life waffle while you wait for Part 2.

Until then,

-J