Copenhagen

Over the bank holiday weekend, we were lucky enough to escape to Copenhagen. It was an escape because it was our first proper trip away without the kids. I have long yearned to visit Denmark being a huge fan of Danish design and it seemed the perfect place to celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary.

We stayed with Airbnb for the first time after reading about it on Katie's blog. It was a really great experience and one I would definitely recommend,. We stayed in a beautiful flat with a roof terrace, it was cheaper than a hotel with the benefit of having space to hang out after a long day of sightseeing. And such an easy experience from beginning to end. They have some amazing places to rent on the website in the US.

Highlights for me? on our first day we wandered up the Observatory, it was such a beautiful building on the inside and the view was great from the top.

There is some great architecture in Copenhagen, with amazing glass fronted buildings like this cropping up right next to the historic Tivoli.

The Royal Palace in the middle of town was really beautiful too, with it's handsome, statuesque buildings.

And of course the shopping; there were lots of lovely shops to explore. The first thing anyone said to me when talking about Copenhagen is that 'it's really expensive'. Yes it is, so we mostly window shopped, and although it is Finnish, it was lovely to visit the Marimekko shop.

We took a long walk on our last day (covering 14km by the end of the day!) to visit Normann Copenhagen. It was worth it, so much lovely Danish design in one shop, I was in heaven; the lighting, the chairs, the tables. I did a bit more than window shopping here, buying a teeny bowl as my souvenir of Copenhagen.

Again on Katie's recommendation, we visited Mikkeller and drank small beers from a numbered menu in the afternoon amongst other (mostly beared) discerning beer drinkers. It was very nice indeed. Apparently one will be opening in London soon.

And you can't go to Copenhagen without a walk around Tivoli, I was far too much of a scardy cat to try out this ride, but it was fun to watch.

One restaurant; Tight, which we visited on our last night was a particular highlight, the atmosphere, the food, the drinks with monkeys in. When I tried to retrieve that monkey from my drink before it got taken away for a souvenir, the waitress very kindly came back with a collection of clean monkeys to take home with me instead. It made me love the place even more.

Bikes were everywhere in Copenhagen, being so flat it is a great way to get round, some had big boxes on the front for carrying all sorts of things, but mostly kids and dogs. 

A great number weren't locked, not something I can imagine getting away with back home.

Another great highlight although not for the reasons I expected, was the Danish Design Centre. I was expecting a centre full of mouth-watering Danish Design but really there one was small exhibition, the real delight was the cafe, an oasis of calm, beautiful furniture and food looking out to the rides of the Tivoli.

They had this wall on which was hung a thin gold sheet of plastic so that when you walked up or down, it created a wave that whistled along next to you as you moved, very cool.

And before we came home, we had time for an epic hotdog, so epic in fact it was quite a task to eat, or maybe I was just dragging my heels reluctant to come home.

And I won't even begin to mention the Danish pastries that we consumed ...