2012 Europe Trip - Day 12: København Tours

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Sunday, August 19, 2012

2012 Europe Trip - Day 12: København Tours

Travel journal entries from my trip to Europe from May 12-28, 2012. Maybe subscribe to the RSS feed.

Thursday would be a day planned around tours. The first was a walking tour. After a simple breakfast at a café near the hostel, I met up with the tour group at 11am. A company called New Europe puts on "free" walking tours in several European cities. I say "free" because the tours are not quite totally free—the guides depend on tips—but either way, the tours are worthwhile. I had taken part in one in 2009 in Amsterdam and found it a good way to get acquainted with the city and get an overview of the main sights. Our trip was led by a friendly and entertaining guy from the Czech Republic named Igor.

The tour was comprehensive: about three hours of walking with a lunch break in the middle. We saw sights like Nyhavn, the Magasin du Nord, the royal palace, the opera house, the town hall, and the old and new town squares. We also heard about a Danish guy named Tommy Sneum, Denmark's former dominion over Southern Sweden, a defector from East Germany, and the Danish Royal Family. It was a very informative and engaging overview.

After the tour's three hours of walking, I needed a break. Time for an iced coffee at a coffee shop at Kongens Nytorv. I had also gotten quite a bit of sun on the walk, so I opted to stay inside the shop and give my skin a rest as well. The people-watching was great, as the weather seemed to turn this into the first week of summer for Copenhageners. I saw lots of cyclists riding in Copenhagen's cyclist-friendly dedicated bike lanes, and the beautiful, tanned Danish girls breaking out their summer wardrobes made for some great scenery, too.

When my coffee and reading break ended, I headed back to the hostel, where I bumped into Ryan, one of my roommates. We went out for an elegant dinner of some chicken pita sandwich wrap. It was cheap. Ryan had spent a few years in the Navy and was now a student at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. We connected over some stories of travel in Europe and life in the Midwest.

After dinner, we opted to do a pub crawl run by the same New Europe company from the walking tour. So this was tour #2. Our group was unusually small, with just five people; all guys. Our Irish guide, Gareth, was surprised, and talked about how they had had over 100 on a recent Thursday. Still, it was a pretty good group. In addition to Ryan and me, there was a guy named Michael from Switzerland, Mike from Canada, and a half-Brazilian, half-Spanish guy who lives in London whose name I forget. Now I feel bad. Anyway, the tour was a lot of fun. The bars started fairly empty, because apparently there was some soccer match and everyone was watching at home. Things picked up later, though. We started at Hiedi's (totally empty), then moved to Billy Bar (looked like it could be a lot of fun, but it was mostly empty). I can't remember the name of the third bar, but that's not too big a deal, as they had some Danish comedian, so it was kind of lame for us. The final bar was a club called A-Bar (the A stands for Australia). It was a lot of fun. We played a couple rounds of pool, watched a bit of beer pong, and chatted with the locals. By the end of the night, we were getting more social.

Once things at A-Bar started wrapping up, we headed back toward the hostel, near the well-known Andy's Bar. Well-known for staying open until 5 or later. First we stopped at the 7-11 for some beers, and I got a banana. Then we went to Andy's for a bit. It seemed fun, but with it being close to 4am at that point, we decided to call it a night. The sun was just about to rise as we re-entered the hostel.

[Note: You can click on any of the photos below to zoom in.]