We reached Copenhagen only around 12 noon, but we had a lot to cover. This was the only Scandinavian city where we could really feel the crowd. Almost all the attractions are centred around the central station, with walks ranging from 10-20 mins, although it felt longer as we strolled through the busy streets. I thought it was due to Christmas but was told that it is like this throughout the year.
We came out of the train station to find one of the oldest amusement parks, Tivoli, right outside. However the kids were not interested in the rides and the long queues further dissuaded us from wasting our time there. We walked around the corner to find a Lego store where we got my son a Red Bull F1 car to assemble. Then we went to the Town Square for a quick photostop before walking past to find the Museum of Illusions.
The ticket prices shocked me and made me realise that I should have got the Copenhagen Card which is much more economical for visiting multiple attractions. I struggled to buy the card for a long time with a poor mobile connection and multiple errors in both the website and the app. I would strongly recommend booking as much as possible before the trip to avoid wasting time. I spent almost 30 mins to get the card. Once we had that though it was a breeze, with the card accepted in most attractions.
I was a bit hesitant with the Museum of Illusions at first,.as I thought the exhibits would be similar to the Science Centre in Singapore. While some exhibits were similar, all of us really enjoyed our time there, with various illusions making us question our brain.
After the Museum of Illusions, we took away a quick lunch from China Box that had on the benches near the National Museum of Denmark. My daughter wanted to spend the whole day at the museum, so we left her there and went to see the other attractions.
We went first to the Christiansborg Palace right at the end of the street. It was a huge sprawling campus with countless rooms and almost every room decorated for Christmas. The royalty do know how to enjoy their life in grandeur.
We visited the Royal stables, which had a few white horses that were well taken care of and a few carriages that have been used in the past. There was also a small Museum next to it. Large parts of the palace itself was out of bounds for the public and there was a big queue to see the view from the top of the tower, so we visited the associated Chapel where the king was baptised and married.
We came out of the palace and wanted to go to the Round Tower next. This made us stroll through a lovely Christmas market, where we stopped for some hot drinks before taking in the busy shopping atmosphere of the Christmas weekend. It was definitely expensive to buy anything there, with a small cup of hot chocolate costing the equivalent of USD 10. But we did nevertheless buy a few drinks to keep us warm through our strolls. When we went to the round tower, we realised that the Copenhagen Card is not accepted there.
We were fast running out of time, so we decided to skip that and go to the nearby Rosenberg castle instead, where the royal crowns are stored in the Treasury. What was a short walk in the map turned out to be a big stroll around the King's garden, which was vast. It was barren now but I could only imagine the vivid colours that would spring to life in thw spring and summer. There was also a specially curated rose garden. When we finally figured out the entrance of the castle we were a few minutes late to enter and were asked to come back tomorrow. However, we did do a quick photo stop and saw the royal treasury being heavily guarded by armed soldiers.
We only had enough time to walk back and pick up our daughter from the museum. While a bit sad that our Copenhagen trip was reduced to a walking tour, we were still happy to take in the way of life there by walking through the streets.
We had a bit of a scare when we came back to the museum and could not find our daughter anywhere. We couldn't reach her mobile as well, so panic set in for a bit and I went around the different floors of the museum trying to find her. At least this way I did a whistle stop tour of the museum. While I couldn't spot her, thankfully it was closing time so they asked all visitors to leave. My daughter came out and asked me to chill saying she had switched off the phone to conserve battery! Well, I could see the logic in that as my battery had ran out quickly today and the power bank was taking too long to charge it back.
Anyway we made our way back to Malmo by train and took away some light dinner including salads, noodles and pasta from the supermarket there.
Copenhagen is a bustling city that ranks at the top of the places considered the best to live in. I am not so sure about that as it seemed pretty expensive (even coming from Singapore) and appeared no different from any of the other cosmopolitan cities, or maybe that's just the case because our trip just straddled the city centre and surrounding areas.
Lessons learnt from today is to start early in the morning (which is a bit of a dream with young kids), finish early before daylight goes away (as the kids are mentally switched off in visiting places once its dark) and since the attractions close by 4 or 5pm local time, it doesn't give us an awful lot of time in winter to visit them. Doubtful if we would have a chance to revist any of these tomorrow, we went to bed, with our itinerary for tomorrow taking us a bit out of Copenhagen in a drive across Denmark.
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