New Harbor
this intricate ballet pose is actually me falling off this rock
Following my trip to Paris, I buckled down to study for my last exam and packed up my flat. After my exam, my friend Emma and I decided to celebrate the end of our second year of University by touring Copenhagen. We set out from Edinburgh on May 23, full of excitement, at 2:20pm and arrived in Copenhagen at about 5pm local time. After collecting our bags, we headed to an information desk to ask for directions to our hostel. Somehow, just by seeing the address of Danhostel, the woman at the information desk knew exactly how we should get there, and gave us directions to the metro station and instructions to go two stops before getting on a train, going one stop, and then walking to the right. This may sound like a long trek, but it only took about 25 minutes before we left the train station. We looked to the right, wondering if the 'right' she had specified was to the right when facing the station or away from it, and finally decided to ask for directions. This turned out to be the right choice, and ten minutes later we were checking into our hostel.
emma doing yoga
Danhostel
Danhostel is the nicest hostel I have stayed in. The only downside is that it is a little far away from the city center, so options for food and sightseeing are somewhat limited. We had a single room with a bunk bed. The bathrooms, which are cleaned three times a day, were just down the hall. The hostel buildings look more like farm or camping buildings, and are right next to a park. We had a quick dinner, then walked around the park for a while before going to bed.
loads of bikes parked in front of the train station
The next morning, we checked out of the hostel, took the metro and train to the city center (Bella Centre), and toured around Copenhagen city. As luck would have it, it was the day of the Copenhagen Marathon, which meant that many things were closed, but that was ok with us. We walked past Tivoli, a theme park, and to the New Harbour, where we paused to take photos. New Harbour is what is typically seen if you google 'Copenhagen' - the rows of bright yellow, orange, green, and blue buildings facing each other over a river. Though the online photos are nice, New Harbour is much more beautiful in real life. After that, we walked on to the Palace, which is really four orangey-yellow buildings surrounding a circular square centre. It was extremely crowded with other tourists, so we didn't stay long before finding lunch in a cafe. We sat outside in the sun with a view of the New Harbor for a few hours, enjoying our panini and coffee, before heading back out to explore the city a little more. We walked until we came across the stables housing the royal horses, and would have gone inside to see them except that you had to pay and we were running out of Danish Krone, so we admired them from afar and them admired their large training arena, too. A few minutes away from that we found a garden of flowers with inviting grassy lawns, so we plopped down to sunbath and contemplate Copenhagen. The city is beautiful, very open with wide streets and, at least on the day we were there, not much traffic. There are bike roads along the sides of every car road, and we saw many more bikes than cars. This made the city more quiet than most other cities, and also much cleaner. The Danish people we spoke with were extremely friendly and happy to help us, and everyone seemed to speak English just about as well as they spoke Danish. Amazing. All in all, I really liked Copenhagen, and was sad to be leaving it as we headed to the train station to catch a train to our next destination: Malmo, Sweden.
it was so sunny I got sunburned for the first time in about 9 months (!!)
this is the arena for the royal horses to train in
looking cool..