Wanting an October half term break without paying over the odds, we used Skyscanner to price flights to ‘Everywhere’ deciding to pick wherever we hadn’t been that was cheapest. Copenhagen won with flights from Luton coming up at under £50 return. We managed to find a well-reviewed budget central hotel for under £100 each making it a pretty cheap break as long as we could keep the costs down while there in what is a notoriously expensive Scandinavian country!
After a bit of research on things to do, we decided to buy a £57 Copenhagen tourist card giving us entry to a variety of attractions and use of public transport throughout the city, including to and from the airport, all for one price. Our hotel included breakfast and, with it being Continental, we were able to make up sandwiches for lunch to take out with us to save on buying anything. It also offered free tea and coffee in the lobby throughout the day so, with it being in a central location, we were able to return to sit down for a while and have this instead of popping into a cafe and buying a hot drink.
Arriving into Copenhagen airport early evening, we easily managed to navigate the public transport system into the city centre and walk the short distance to our hotel. After checking in, we took a walk to Nyhaven then wandered in the immediate vicinity eventually stumbling across a ‘hole in the wall’ type cafe selling reasonably priced take out pizza which sorted that night’s dinner!
We were up early for breakfast the next morning then walked back to Nyhaven where we used our tourist card for a boat ride on the Copenhagen canals. It was a guided tour with an English commentary and helped us to get our bearings a bit, see where some of the attractions we wanted to visit were and learn a bit about the city.
After our canal tour, we walked to the first of many palaces to explore in the city, Christiansborg Palace.
It was free to go up the Palace Tower to enjoy beautiful views across the city and our tourist card gave us access to look around various parts of the palace buildings including the Royal Reception Rooms, the stables and the ruins underneath the palace.
We had lunch sat out in the palace courtyard before moving off to our next destination, the Museum of Denmark to learn some of the history of the country and see artefacts from it’s past. Our Copenhagen Card also got us a free pack of postcards souvenir from the museum!
From the museum, we caught the metro across to the Hans Christian Anderson Fairytale House. The attraction was really aimed more at kids with its exhibit of tableaux depicting the various fairytales written by the famous Danish author and we’d probably have thought it not worth the money had it not been included on our tourist card but as it was, it was worth a quick saunter around.
Returning to the main centre of the city and after quickly popping back to our hotel for a cup of tea, it was off to another palace next, Rosenburg Castle. We walked around the rooms of the castle before descending to the basement to see the Crown Jewels.
It had been a busy day of sightseeing but we still had time to fit in one more attraction on our Copenhagen card so we walked to the Rundetaarn, or the Roundhouse, so called because of it rotunda shape. This is a 17th Century tower which you can walk to the top of up a winding spiral path to an observation deck.
The sun was just starting to set as we reached the top making for some pretty views over the city.
With it now being evening and most of the attractions closing for the day, we instead walked to Strøget, the city’s main shopping street which was still buzzing with shoppers and tourists.
Our first stop on the busy pedestrianised street was the Lego Store, the flagship store for the famous Danish construction toy full of lego reconstructions of famous Danish icons including Copenhagen’s Nyhavn area!
We shopped in a few souvenir stores along the street then went for dinner at nearby buffet restaurant, Dalle Valle. We had seen the restaurant advertised with a money off coupon in a tourist leaflet we had picked up at our hotel and its all-you-can-eat option, along with a variety of foods to suit our plain tastes, seemed a good idea especially being on a budget. Then, exhausted after a jam-packed day, it was back to the hotel.
We began the next day back at Nyhanv where we used our tourist card to visit the Amber Museum before spending a bit more time looking around the area and finding the houses there that were once lived in by Hans Christian Anderson.
Continuing the Hans Christian Anderson theme, from Nyhavn we took the 20 minute or so pretty walk along the waterside out to see the iconic The Little Mermaid sculpture.
While there, we stumbled across Kastellet, or The Citadel, a fortress which is now mainly a park and historic site. We had a stoll around before walking back towards the city and the third palace of our trip, Amalienborg Palace, current home of the Danish Royal family.
Our Copenhagen card included entry to the Amalienborg Museum – access to some of the rooms in the palace and after our visit, we exited the palace just in time to watch the Changing of the Guard ceremony in the palace courtyard.
Getting through the list of attractions included on our card a lot quicker than we had planned to, we decided we had time to fit in one more attraction this morning before heading to Tivoli Gardens this afternoon as planned. So after looking at the map, we decided to head across to the district of Christianshavn to visit the Church of Our Saviour where you can climb the stairs to the top of its steeple.
This was an interesting experience as most of the stairs are on the outside of the steeple and they narrow as they near the very top making it tricky to navigate past those coming back down as you go up. Stopping to let people past does at least give you time to catch your breath though!
That was our third observation deck of sorts since arriving in Copenhagen but all were worth a visit as their different situations in the city each gave a unique vantage point.
After sitting in the church grounds to eat our lunch (once again made up from our hotel buffet breakfast!), we caught the train over to Tivoli Gardens.
Our Copenhagen Card included entry into Tivoli Gardens but any rides were extra. Seeing as ride tickets were a lot more expensive than we had expected we decided to give them a miss and just walk around the grounds. As it was autumn, the park had been decorated heavily for Hallowe’en with hundreds of pumpkins making it a fun place to just wander around and explore.
Not going on any rides meant our visit didn’t take up as much time as we had planned for so we checked the map that had come with our card to see what included attractions were nearby and decided to walk to the nearby Planetarium where we had entry to exhibits and to watch a film in the dome-shaped theatre. We were handed some headphones as we got our tickets for the film so we could listen to the narration in English. It was an unexpected but interesting way to spend an hour!
After our Planetarium visit, we walked back to a diner we had seen near to Tivoli Gardens and grabbed pulled pork sandwiched and fries for dinner before returning to Nyhavn where we visited a waffle shop for desert before returning to our hotel.
The following day we would be flying back home from not until the evening still giving us plenty of time in the city.
Having exhausted all the city centre activities offered on our Copenhagen Card, we decided to venture out a bit and visit the Carlsberg Brewery. The card included entrance to a tour of the old brewery where we learnt about the history of the drink and visited the World’s largest collection of unopened beer bottles!. The tour ended in a bar where we could have a free drink of Carslberg but as neither of us drink, we swapped our voucher for a delicious Diet Coke instead!
Next up, and purely to fill the time, we headed to Copenhagen Zoo, entrance to which was also included on our Copenhagen Card. The zoo was quite small and didn’t take us long to walk around. We caught the train back to the city centre after, walking back to our hotel for a hot drink while we decided how to spend the last few hours in the city.
Spotting something called the Experimentarium in our Copenhagen Card booklet, we decided to give that a go. We had see it across the river from our boat tour on the first day in the city but it hadn’t been on our list of places to visit in the city. Seeing as the only other places left on our card were those out in neighbouring towns and cities and therefore too far away to reach at this point, we caught the metro across the river.
This turned out to be one of the best decisions we made all trip.The Experiemetarium was an interactive science museum, perfect for big kids like us. We took part in a range of activities including running in a giant hamster ball, attempting to get across a room without our feet touching the floor, obstacle courses, and pedalling on giant bicycles. A super fun way to spend an hour!
Exhausted from the various activities, we caught the train back to the main shopping street, Strøget, for some last minute shopping and returned to the Dalle Valle buffet restaurant for dinner. We followed that with a dessert of chocolate covered Churros from a gelato store we’d been eyeing up all week before returning to our hotel to collect our luggage and make our way back to the airport.
It had been a fun and busy few days in the city and we really felt like we’d seen a lot of what Copenhagen hass to offer while sticking to a tight budget!
Miss Travels 
Not often to hear people saying they manage Copenhagen on a budget. But during the low season you can get the hotels for a reasonable price. Weather might be a bit dodgy on that time of the year.
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Like!! Great article post.Really thank you! Really Cool.
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