May 29th – May 31st, 2022

Once upon a time, there was some discussion amongst the Pecks that we would try to stretch the two weeks of our trip into three phases: UK, Scandinavia, and individual adventures. As you can tell from the details of other posts, such an itinerary would have been disastrous. A friend of Jordan’s noted that the Pecks had “fit my entire semester of study abroad weekend trips into one family vacation!” Imagine if we had thrown Norway and Denmark, traveling as a group of seven, into that agenda! Only travel bloggers and our NGO wunderkind neighbor, Dessa, have the energy for that.

But that doesn’t mean that a few of us couldn’t get a taste of Northern Europe. Avery, Ismael, and Jeremy fortunately circumvented the hellish connection conditions that the other four encountered on Sunday, May 29th and flew from Edinburgh to Copenhagen.

Avery was kind enough to provide us commentary on the experience, Ismael provided the video footage and thorough photo documentation, and Jeremy came up with a cool group name: udgang (though the Danish word for exit, it does, of course, include GANG).

Avery: After landing our first evening and grabbing a local favorite (Jagger Burgers), an itinerary for our time in Copenhagen began to form.

Top left: This was the first place we went in Copenhagen, a burger chain called Jagger, where we considered using the bike share system for the following day. The next morning I walked to a grocery store and got action shots of cyclist parents (see left middle). All throughout Europe, we had been fixated on mastering public transportation, and even got city passes for buses and trains. But Copenhagen, like Amsterdam, is of a different breed. Seeing these parents taking kids to school on bikes proved to us the intrinsic relationship between Copenhagen identity and cycling, and Jeremy and Ismael advocated for two wheel transport after that. We did indeed, ride bikes that whole second day and it was AWESOME. Peep Jeremy’s infamous bright red hoodie.

Bottom right: The view from our backpacker hotel.

Brunch spread that was heavy on the rhubarb at Wulff and Konstali; you could build your own breakfast with different carbs, proteins, and condiments, but the rhubarb seemed to be a constant.

After some excellent views and participation in biker culture, we parked our bikes and headed over to the canal for our boat tour.

You can see our hotel starred in yellow, showing the proximity to the extensive canal network of Copenhagen. But more importantly, Copenhagen (and most of Denmark really) is just sticking out into the Baltic Sea and it was our experience that traveling through Denmark is an exercise in crossing bridges of all shapes and sizes.

Back to the boat tour though:

This was absolutely the best way to see Copenhagen. We saw all the important architecture (row houses, churches, palaces).

Top left: Copenhagen’s over designed symphony center whose roof doubles as a diving board for professional diving practice.

Bottom left: These are the palaces where the royal family of Denmark live, called Amalienborg.

Top left: But of course, a trip to Copenhagen would not be complete without paying homage to its greatest product: LEGO. Did you know that Lego is a Danish company? Of course you did 🙂

Top right: European hot dogs are unsurprisingly better than American ones, even Jeremy’s silly looking French style one.

Bottom: Some delicious ice cream by the canal.

Our time in Copenhagen was short but sweet. The success of the canal tour, coupled with our glowing reviews of the London BigBus, is setting up an important theme. Don’t turn up your nose at the touristy sound of a guided tour, especially if said tour takes you on an unusual mode of transportation. More on fun modes of transportation to come (hint: rhymes with tunicular).

Time to get going! We were off to Hamburg the next day; always on stylish European trains, always with some stylish European breakfast. In this case, muesli seems to be all the rage no matter where you go, but in Copenhagen, rhubarb strikes again.

Bottom: Case in point on the bridges thing.