Retake the City: Copenhagen

by Alex in Retake the City, Europe, Denmark

We decided to spend Christmas 2013 in Copenhagen pretty much out of the blue. A white Copenhagen Christmas has always been a dream of mine, and even though it didn't snow, we still had an awesome 2.5 weeks in Copenhagen - also the longest we've spent in any one city since leaving Kaikoura in October! Copenhagen - CPH to its friends - is a beautiful city, absolutely worth visiting, but is somewhat on the more expensive side of "Holy crap, how much did that cost???" But if you keep your eyes open and take advantage of some fairly simple tips, you can cut down on your costs while still enjoying everything the captial of Denmark has to offer.

Stay

I won't lie, this is where a huge chunk of your money will be going. If you're the kind of traveller who doesn't mind couch surfing, that can be a great way to find a free place to stay, but it's rarely an option for more than a couple of nights. For most of our time in Denmark, we managed to find a place to stay through AirBnb, but honestly, I think it's nothing short of a small miracle that we were able to find someone who was willing to open up their home to complete strangers over Christmas and New Year. If you're not ready, willing or able to find someone to host you, Copenhagen does have a number of well-reviewed backpacker hostels, but a dorm bed will cost you upwards of 20 USD per night, and privates can cost anywhere up to 100+ USD per night.

Some recommendations:
Generator Copenhagen - dorms from $25 US/night
Copenhagen Downtown Hostel - dorms from $24 US/night
Danhostel Copenhagen City - dorms from $33 US/night

Eat

Like, well, basically everything in Copenhagen, food is quite expensive - particularly if you have to or want to eat out for most meals. Expect to pay around $15 for a reasonable lunch meal, and between $20-$30 for a decent dinner in most restaurants. There are some cheaper options available, such as the near-ubiquitous hot dog stands (because when you think Denmark, you think hot dog, don't you?), and the many chain and independent bakeries scattered throughout the city. One of these, Andersen, had a store just around the corner from where we were staying in Frederiksberg, and it was love at first smell.

If, like us, you're lucky enough to be staying somewhere with a kitchen, you can save some money by buying your own groceries instead. There were two main supermarkets near us - Netto, which was a slightly more no-frills store, was good for cheap basics, while Irma, while slightly more expensive, stocked some more exclusive or higher-quality items. All in all, we ended up spending about $80 for a week's worth of groceries.

Get Around

Compared to, well, all of South East Asia, Copenhagen is an awesomely easy city to get around. The CBD and inner suburbs are covered by a spiderweb of public transport lines, as well as being probably the most walkable capital city I've ever seen. The whole city is pleasantly flat, and motorists are almost alarmingly polite to pedestrians. A note of caution, though: Virtually every sidewalk is accompanied by a bicycle lane - sometimes almost indistinguishable from the footpath. Be careful not to walk down the bike lanes -as I frequently did - Danish cyclists are a lot less forgiving of pedestrians than drivers are.

As for public transport, we used the Metro, Copenhagen's subway system, almost every day. The metro has two lines - yellow and green - running from the suburbs into the city, with the yellow line continuing out to the airport. Services run every 5-10 minutes, and the journey from the airport to the heart of the city takes about 10 mins. Change at Copenhagen central station (Kobenhav H) to connect to the city's above-ground railway (there's gotta be a word for that - superway?), as well as the intercity DSB trains travelling to the rest of Denmark and into Sweden. From Frederiksberg, it cost us $5 to get into the centre of the city, and $7 to the airport.

See

If you've only got a couple of days in Copenhagen, I recommend the cOPENhagen card as your best bet for getting around and seeing the sights. If you have a bit longer, I still recommend it - with a little bit of planning, the cOPENhagen card (wow, that's annoying to type!) can save you heaps of money. You can buy cards valid for 24, 48, 72 or 120 hours, with prices ranging from $60 to $150. The cards give you free travel on all of Copenhagen's public transport, as well as free or discounted entry to a huge number of landmarks, museums and attractions. A full list can be found here. While we were in town, we took a canal tour and saw the Little Mermaid, went to the zoo, the aquarium, the marble church, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art and Tivoli Gardens, and we had an awesome time in each and every one of them. And all for the cost of two 48 hour cards.

The thing about the Copenhagen card (yeah, I'm just gonna call it that) is that they're valid for 24 (or however many) hours from the time they're activated. This is cool because it means you can wring an extra day out of them with a bit of forethought. We bought 48 hour cards and activated them just after 3pm on the the first day - so they were valid until 4pm on the third day, which happened to be New Year's Eve. We knew we wanted to ring in the new year at Tivoli Gardens - Copenhagen's famous amusement park which I would totally recommend to anyone, any time of the year - so as long as we got to Tivoli before 4pm, we could still get discounted entry with our cards. To all intents and purposes, we got an extra day for free, just by being clever. 

Yeah, okay... Tash is the clever one. I just held on and enjoyed the ride.

NB: Copenhagen Zoo has recently come under fire for putting down one of their giraffes, despite him being in perfect health. This happened after we left Denmark, but I feel like I should add this grain of salt to my recommendation.

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