Friday 30th June, 2023 – Copenhagen, Denmark

Friday was my last day in Copenhagen. We’d planned it so that we all travelled home the day after the workshop finished so that people could stay behind and socialise on Thursday evening as opposed to the usual routine of people being distracted in the last hour or so because they know they need to catch their flights. This meant goodbyes had mostly been said, and I had all morning to myself to do with as I chose. Because the cheaper flight was mid-afternoon, it meant I could do some more sightseeing, have an early lunch and then collect my bags from the hotel and head to the airport.

After breakfast, I checked out and handed my bags over to be stored. And then I went out for a walk. I set off along Islands Brygge and then crossed the water on the Bryggbroen, which is for cyclists and pedestrians and starts just by the Gemini Residence (two grain silos bolted together to create flats).

The bridge links Havneholmen and Islands Brygge and was the first bridge to be built over the harbour in Copenhagen in 50 years when it opened in 2006. It was then extended in 2014 with the introduction of the new Cykelslangen (Bike Snake), which runs around the Fisketorvet shopping centre on Kalvebod Brygge. Taking this route meant I also discovered one of Copenhagen’s harbour swimming facilities, the Havnebadet Fisketorvet, which enables you to swim in the harbour from 1st May through to March 31st each year. They’re a hardy lot, Copenhagen swimmers is all I can say. I just don’t understand why it’s closed through April…

From there I made my way towards the city centre by way of Kalvebod Brygge and past another swimming option, the Kalvebod Bølge (Kalvebod Wave). This is an extension of the waterfront, and provides space for a range of water activities, including kayaking as well as swimming. This harbour bath is open 24 hours a day all year round, which may not be popular with the people in the hotel that sits just behind it!

I’d now decided that I had time to go and visit the new Danish Architecture Center (DAC), which was pretty much staring me in the face by now. It wasn’t open last time I’d been in Copenhagen, and it didn’t cost too much so in I went.

I knew I wasn’t going to be able to get around all of it, so I decided to concentrate on the permanent exhibitions about Danish architecture and design history. It seems to cover the Viking Age to the present and does its best to include all the highlights of Danish architectural history, from a medieval brick to some seriously futuristic designs. There’s a lot to see and all of it fascinating. The excellent and informative audio guide that is supplied to all visitors told me all I needed to know about what I was seeing. In fact, it was almost too much, and by the end I was starting to skim through it because I was getting tired and beginning to suffer from what we refer to as “museum back”. Basically, it seems to come from walking around very slowly, and cricking the neck up to look at things more closely. And it was getting towards lunchtime. I briefly considered the Design Shop and Café, but in the end had a quick look around the shop and then headed back out – without having bought anything, which has to be a first for me. Not even a fridge magnet… and certainly not a catalogue or anything similar, the latter because there wasn’t one. This was a shame because I would really have liked to do more reading after the event.

I needed lunch and so I headed for the Torvehallerne market once more with intent to find something that appealed that I could sit down for an hour and enjoy. After going around the two buildings twice, and deciding it was too windy to sit outside on the benches, I settled on Il Mattarello which specialises in fresh pasta. I ordered their pasta carbonara, and a glass of white wine and settled down in the lee of the building to enjoy a tasty lunch, much improved by copious amounts of grated Parmesan.

After lunch I walked rapidly back to the hotel, retrieved and reorganised my luggage, and asked the receptionist to order me a cab to the airport. I didn’t fancy lugging my case around the Metro system and figured it would be a much quicker ride than we’d had the previous Friday (and thus much cheaper). At the airport I was lucky enough to be invited to gatecrash the passport stamping queue and was thus left with plenty of time to enjoy the business lounge and do a little shopping (Summerbird chocolates are an absolute must, especially the “amber” chocolate) ahead of my flight back to Heathrow.

The flight was thankfully on time, and for once my bag didn’t take long to come through. I was back at my car very promptly in the long stay car park (and would have been faster if I’d correctly noted which lane I’d parked in rather than only being able to remember that it was somewhere against the back fence). I was home a little after 7:30 pm, having missed most of the heavy rush hour traffic. It had been an excellent eight days on all fronts and a good way to ease back into foreign travel.