In 2019, we planned to travel to Scandinavia as part of a six month long trip to Europe. We’d booked everything months in advance, including 3 months in Italy. Just before we left, we learned about the Schengen zone. Apparently, 27 countries across Europe have an agreement that allows tourists from other countries, including Australia to enter without a formal visa. The visa kicks off in any of these 27 countries automatically, but lasts only for 90 days. This means that if you stay longer, you violate your visa. If anyone checks this in an airport, they can ship you home at your own expense, fine you €15,000 and ban you from entering Europe for 5 years! Obviously, we didn’t want to take that chance, so we had to cancel our trip to Scandinavia.

Here we are, 6 years later, finally realising this dream.

Getting here is a gruelling affair. Rising at 6:30 am, as per usual, our 3:30 flight from Melbourne, had us landing 14.5 hours later in Doha for a 3.5 hour stopover. Then another 7.5 hours to Copenhagen, our first stop. Given the time difference, we landed at 8:00am. This meant we had to wait until 3:00pm for our room. If you can’t sleep on planes, like Lidia, this means you’re awake for a total of 41.5 hours.

The lack of sleep didn’t stop us from hitting the ground running. Copenhagen is a beautiful, clean, picturesque city and our hotel was ideally located right next to the main canal, which was lined with beautiful, coloured buildings and al fresco restaurants. One of the buildings was the house where Hans Christian Anderson lived, who has achieved celebrity cult status here.

After exploring a little, we stopped at one of the restaurants for lunch. The most common offering in all of these restaurants is a local dish called smørrebrød, which is a wooden paddle containing three open sandwiches. Totally delicious and went very well with the local Danish beer, Carlsberg.

After lunch we went searching for Danish pastries. Turns out, they’re harder to find in Denmark than they are in Geelong! Even the bakeries don’t make them. I’m left wondering if Danish pastries are, in fact, Danish?

After a magnificent dinner in a very nice restaurant, we headed back to our hotel for an early night. The hotel was very old, built in 1805. It was relatively young compared to the houses along the canal, many of which date back to the 1600s. Our room had very heavy, low wooden beams which I mentioned to Lidia I was destined to smack my head on by the end of our stay.  We managed to get a decent night’s sleep on night one, although we did wake up with the sun, at 3:30am.

We spent the next day exploring Copenhagen in detail. The weather was beautiful, sunny and in the high teens. Unseasonably nice for Denmark, apparently, and quite rare, so we weren’t complaining. Neither were the local youth, who congregated in the multitudes next to the canals, sunbathing in bikinis. It wasn’t quite warm enough for that in my opinion, but then this weather is probably scorching for them.

A word about the Danish people: they have a word, hygge, which has no English translation, but means something along the lines of that feeling you have when you feel safe, warm, cosy and contented. A great word!

During our walk around the city, we discovered the palace where our local Aussie girl, Queen Mary, lives. Their palace is part of a complex of four identical palaces, arranged in a circle around an enormous open courtyard, patrolled by guards that look like the guards from Buckingham palace, except with blue uniforms rather then red.

A interesting fact we learned about the Danish royal family, is that their ancestry dates back to the Vikings, and every king since then has been named either Fredrick or Christian. Mary’s husband is Fredrick the 10th, and their son will be Christian the 11th.

We also stopped by a statue of the little mermaid, which was created to honour the fairy tale by Hans Christian Anderson. She sits on a rock in the harbour and is a very popular tourist attraction.

That evening we visited the 3rd oldest amusement park in the world, Tivoli Gardens. Built in 1843, this place was so popular that Walt Disney was inspired to build Disneyland after he went there and you can see many similarities even today. My new Tommy Hilfiger sleeveless puffer jacket liked it so much, it decided to stay there. First, and hopefully last, lost item of the trip.

That night after returning to the hotel, we walked into our room and I walked into the ginormous wooden beam, as predicted. It’s safe to say, that after being there for over 400 years, the beam was not phased in the least by the encounter, other than perhaps gaining a few of my brain cells.

Next morning we drove over the 8 kilometre Øresund bridge that links Denmark to Sweden. We were on route to Stockholm, but to break down the journey, we stopped over night in a country manor on a lake. Before a sumptuous dinner, we spent some time in a wood-fired jacuzzi over looking the lake. This wasn’t on my bucket list, but it should have been.

Tomorrow we drive to Stockholm.