Things have gone a little crazy for us over the past couple weeks. Matt was promoted and works very long hours, I got a new job (in the city!more money!short commute!) and start the beginning of next month, and we may have found a new place to live (in the very early stages of getting things sorted so fingers crossed it all works out).

It doesn’t really sound like much when written down but trust me, with all that and a couple of trips thrown into the mix, the next couple months are going to be more chaotic than usual.

All that to say, we went to Copenhagen and Malmo almost 2 weeks ago now and I’m only just getting around to writing this post!

I’m a big fan of Scandinavian countries and could happily live in any one of them. The people are so friendly, the food is delicious, transport is efficient and the landscape is gorgeous (even in the middle of the frozen tundra).

We started our trip to Copenhagen with a very early wake up call at 3am and after lots of coffee and a quick nap on the plane, we hit the ground running (walking?). We started with grabbing a hotdog from Alexander’s Bakery (and went back again the next day) then tried to check out Tivoli Gardens.

Unfortunately, it didn’t open for a couple of weeks so we weren’t able to go in and look around at the gardens and amusement park. At this point, it was starting to snow! In April! So we decided to have a second lunch (because why not!) of crepes and hot chocolate to warm up. Now, my crepes may look weird but those are caramelised apple slices and they tasted so so good. According to the menu, it’s a French thing so you can bet I’ll be looking for them when we’re in Paris next weekend!

It was still snowing when we finished and since our only plan for the day was to walk around and visit the National Museum, we decided to go there in hopes that the snow would stop by the time we were finished so we could walk around.

I don’t have a very long attention span so while I do like museums, I usually fly through them to see as much as possible before I get bored. Matt is the complete opposite and could spend hours slowly walking around to see every single item. The National Museum was a bit different from the others we’ve been to. I found most of the exhibits fascinating (besides the human skulls/bones in one area – there are no photos because I saw them than ran quickly into the next room) and we managed to spend a couple of hours there. It was probably one of the best museums I’ve been to and it was free!

I loved all the old Scandinavian artifacts like shoes, swords, and drinking horns. It’s quite weird to think that all the things we saw were used by people hundreds or even thousands of years ago.

They had a People of the World exhibit on while we were there and my favourite part was the Inuit section. I remember studying the Inuit culture and people when I was in school and being absolutely fascinated by it. They had these awesome kayaks made from caribou skin and ‘Iron Man’ looking masks made from bone. The only item I didn’t think was accurate was the thong.

I doubt they’d be wearing a thong underneath all the caribou skins and furs needed to survive sub-zero temperatures in the Arctic. Just saying.

Our master plan of waiting out the snow kind of back fired but we decided to continue with our plan to walk around the city.

We did a lot of walking on this trip, so much so that I’m considering wearing a pedometer on our next trip. I would’ve loved to know just how far we walked but an educated guess would be at least 35kms in 3 days.

Life is all about balance so we found a little micro brew bar  and warmed ourselves with some Danish beer and cider before going across the road to Tight for the most amazing burger I’ve ever had.

The next day, we met up with our friends Leah and Jason (also kiwis living in London) who were doing the same trip as us, just in reverse (they started in Malmo)! Our goal was to end up at the Little Mermaid statue and Resistance Museum and we took a very scenic route to get there. We knew what direction to head but picked random and interesting looking streets to get there. As a result, we stumbled upon this amazing marble church.

We’ve been to quite a few churches in our time here but for me, this one was different. It still felt like a place of worship and not another tourist destination. For example, the Cathedral in Reims was gorgeous and still used for services but had a gift shop in the back corner which did nothing for the atmosphere (and actually made me quite upset)! This church was amazing though and even more beautiful inside.

We continued on our journey and found some random trampolines on the path beside the river which Matt seemed to really enjoy.

The sun came out just as we reached Nyhavn. This is a pretty popular part of town with lots of restaurants and bars where you can sit outside and watch the boats and people go by. It was a bit too cold for us (they did have fleece blankets on all the chairs though) but we could definitely imagine it being packed in the summer.

Finally we reached our destination – the Little Mermaid. I was really keen on seeing this statue as I knew a little bit about it thanks to going on city tours with my Dad in Vancouver when I was a kid. Vancouver wanted to place a replica of the statue in Stanley Park but were denied permission so they created a modern version called Girl in a Wetsuit (apparently there are similarities to the Pania of the Reef statue in Napier as well – thanks for telling me that, Mel!).

It was surrounded by tourists taking photos with it so I had to get creative with my angles to get the Mermaid all by herself.

Quite close to the statue was our second destination of the day – the Resistance Museum. Unfortunately, we arrived only 15 minutes before it closed so we had to rush through it. It was a tiny museum but had quite a few interesting items from the war. There were notes with writing so tiny that you had to use a magnifier to read them, items people had left behind when fleeing so that they wouldn’t be identified as Jewish, and crazy homemade guns they’d use to protect themselves.

It was time to warm up and thanks to Leah’s friend (who was also in Copenhagen at the time), we knew to go to Copenhagen’s oldest cafe for a delicious hot chocolate. We were all quite tired from all the walking so we ended up staying there for a couple of hours!

One of the reasons we decided go to Copenhagen (besides the cheap flights) was that we were able to tick off two countries in one trip! We caught the train and 30 minutes later we were in Malmo, Sweden. We walked out of the station with no passport checks or security – gotta love open borders!

Now, there isn’t much to do in Malmo so we spent the next four hours (you guessed it) walking around the city and it’s massive parks. We totally lucked out with weather and actually got to see the SUN! I was starting to think it didn’t exist for a while there…

We finished the day by drinking in the Lilla Torg square soaking up the sunshine.

There were a few oddities we noticed in Malmo that are definitely worth mentioning.

First, this street name because, HA!

Second, people drive race cars like they are normal cars.

And lastly, this couple? Amazing.