Lauren's Passport: Copenhagen

Since we had spent the first couple of weeks of the trip traveling every few days, we decided to make our next stay a little longer so that we could take some time to relax. After reading that Copenhagen is one of the most enjoyable cities in Europe, we thought it would be the perfect place to spend 7 days. Well...don't believe everything you read! Although Copenhagen is a very nice city and would be a great place to live, it does have a couple of major drawbacks for travelers: the weather and the prices. Almost every day was cool, windy, cloudy and had rain for at least some portion of the day. We did have one perfect weather day (sunny and in the high 70's) and we took full advantage by taking the metro to the beach at Amager Strandpark. It was beautiful! The beach is actually on an artificial island that was built in 2005, but it feels just like a real beach. The water was too cold to get in, but we enjoyed walking in the sand and watching the wind and kite surfers. The second challenge that we encountered was the prices...most things seemed to cost about double what they would cost at home. For example, a cup of hot chocolate at a coffee bar was about $8 and the dinner entrees in most restaurants were $25-$30. Needless to say, we didn't do much eating out! We also tried to take full advantage of the various free activities/museums that the city offered, including the National Museum, the Museum of Danish Resistance, and the Danish Design Center. As always, we spent a lot of our time just walking around the city and enjoying the sights.

Our the night train from Amsterdam to Copenhagen, where we spent approximately 12 hours sharing this closet with 4 other people: