Velkommen to Kobenhavn!

So, back from Copenhagen with all body parts and important documents accounted for. Haha, actually Copenhagen (or Kobenhavn as it says on all my maps) is the safest capital city in the world, according to our tour guide Mike. The guided tours in Copenhagen were really good quality, even if our canal tour guide sounded like he might fall asleep he was so familiar with the material. The first day we were in the city we wandered about for almost 4 hours with all our bags until our hotel check-in could begin. This gave me a new respect for backpackers and a higher awareness of my need to pack down in the future. After we finally deposited our bags, we resumed our wandering and went to Nyhavn, or New Harbor. We jumped on a canal tour and spent a really pleasant hour on the water. By the end of the day, however, I had the emotional state of a sleep-deprived two year old and needed some rest, stat.

The second day began with a bike tour of Copenhagen, courtesy of Bike Copenhagen with Mike (fun fact: Copenhagen has the most bikes per capita of any city). It was honestly my favorite part of the trip. The sights were beautiful, and our group hit up every major landmark that I'd wanted to see while in town. When we showed up, Soo and I were the only ones present and we thought we were going to get a private tour of the city... until 5 couples showed up, including one nauseating pair of newlyweds. It was actually a really good group and we had a great time. We made about 10 stops, and Mike would tell us all about the sites and their history. Never before in my life have I heard so much about Kierkegaard and H.C. Andersen. We did make it to Christiania, which was amusing because of everyone's matter-of-factness about it. Mike told us before we got there not to take pictures of the entrance because they don't like any photos getting out of the line-up of drug booths. The cafe in Christiania has a sign by the door saying, "Safest Cafe in the world- 4,000 armed police inspections since 2004".

Also, side note about the food and drinks. Holy expensive! All the restaurants had crazy high prices, so I ended up eating kind of cheaper street food or special lunch deals. The only Danish food I had was the breakfast buffet at our hotel. The first day I had a Chinese meal for lunch and a falafel sandwich for dinner. The next day was pizza for lunch and samosa for dinner. All the food was good but the average cost per meal was about $10 in the U.S. Absolutely insane! We ran across some luck when we went out though and came across a group of men at the bar all too happy to buy us drinks. I'd love to go back to Copenhagen at some point and maybe get a tour to the castle from Hamlet or rent a bike and explore on my own, but I will wait until I'm not a college student and church mouse poor. Overall, it was a fun weekend, but I'm glad to be back and have my bed and normal sized shower-home sweet Oslo.