We woke up on the second day in Copenhagen to a What’s App message from our friends back home about the London Terror attacks. We had BBC News in the hotel room, so put it on and we just watched. There’s something strange about being outside of your home country when something like that happens, it feels surreal. This had come just a few weeks after the Manchester Arena bombing as well which was about 30 minutes away from where we live. It was hard to get excited for the day ahead and in the back of my mind I became slightly nervous about going to Sweden Rocks and Guns n Roses in the coming weeks… but you can’t let fear win. We were lucky enough not to be directly affected by those attacks and after 2 hours of just watching the news and getting a bit emotional we decided to head out.

It was almost like being back in England anyway when we got outside as it was chucking it down with rain. Thankfully we had our eye on one of those big red tourist buses for the day’s itinerary. I like using these as they are hop on / hop off and they go to all the major tourist attractions. We had to be careful that we didn’t get decapitated though…

First stop was The Little Mermaid who we found out has been beheaded, painted and replaced completely in her history. I took this photo of her, I don’t know what kind of statement I was trying to make but I just found it weird that we were there to see this enchanting statue coming out of the water but in the background, big industry is just pumping shit into the atmosphere. Not cool chimney, not cool!

We then headed up an old round tower, there was some confusion over this because I wanted to go up the tower with the big golden ball on it. My partner in crime assured me that’s where we were heading and when we got there, guess who was right. It was me obvs. She’d brought me to the incorrect tower, but the other one was ages away, so we shot up to the top and took some nice pics of the city. The feature image of the blog is one of them and the sky in the pic shows just how gloomy it was that day!

It’s hard to see but this is us stood on a piece of glass inside the middle of the tower. I did NOT enjoy it, you couldn’t even see how far down it went!

There was a Museum / Exhibition half way up the tower too, so whilst it was a mistake that we were there, it was still a worthwhile visit.

I’m a bit of a geek for knowledge, if I go to a new place then I have to learn a bit about it. The big red buses gave us a little audio tour as well as ferrying us around, and my favourite bit of knowledge was learning that the Danes just hoover hot dogs like they are going out of fashion. So obviously, we had to take part in this bold tradition 🙂

I love food and this blog will contain a lot of food related pics / posts. I’ve since become vegetarian as well, and also eat a lot of vegan food, so in later blogs you’ll be able to see me seek out all the veggie dishes that the world has to offer!

However, I was still eating meat in Copenhagen and after having hot dogs for lunch, we were ready to tuck into something else later on. We had discovered another Danish cuisine that we were eager to try, Smorrebrod. We sat outside in this famous part of the city that I can’t remember the name of, I think it was called, ‘The place that’s on all the postcards,’ and we found a restaurant that looked nice but also was cheaper than many of the others.

I Googled it, it was Nyhavn!

Smorrebrod is essentially a piece of bread with some really tasty food piled on top of it. We sat outside, underneath some patio heaters and people-watched along the harbour, after being in the rain all day it was nice to just sit and relax for an hour.

We then continued to explore the city on foot and ended up in a beautiful park with cool statues like this…

…cool buildings…

…and attempting to take perfect romantic pictures like this…

… but I also cocked it up a few times first!

After our stroll through the park we headed back to the Hard Rock to watch some Live Music. Watching Live Music is one of my favourite things to do, so we pulled up a stool, had a few drinks, got a bit tipsy and enjoyed the band. I don’t tend to drink normally when I’m away with my partner just because we save our money for other things… but this was nice, we felt relaxed and skipped past Hans Christian Anderson afterwards on our way to the train station. Then, nothing quite sobers you up like discovering you’re stranded – our train back to the hotel had been canceled!

This was the first holiday that I had been using my mobile phone a lot and even though I sometimes hate it, technology came to save the day. We also managed to direct another couple to go to Germany, this was weird because the UK is an island so we’re not really used to people trying to get the train to another country in the middle of the night, maybe they were spies?!

Well, we managed to get back eventually and settle down for the night, ready to take on the next day. Little did we know how scared we would both be the next day!

Part 3 coming soon…

Paul Day Away