If you follow my Instagram posts, you may or may not seen that one of my friends from back home came to visit me in Copenhagen! My friend Maggie flew all the way to Stockholm, and then took the train down to Denmark to stay with me for a few days. Sadly enough, those few days turned out to fly by. The first day, I took her all around the popular tourist destinations around Copenhagen such as Kastellet, the Little Mermaid, Amalienborg Palace, the Opera, Nyhavn, Strøget, Tivoli, and the like. We ended up walking quite a bit that day, and decided to eat at Paludan, one of the student-friendly eateries in the centre. We snapped a lot of pictures, and came home exhausted! As it was nearing Halloween, Maggie, my flatmates, and I decided to watch Annabelle. It was a freaky film, but it definitely deserves its 5.7/10 rating on IMDB.
The second day, we ended up renting a bike in the morning from a local bike shop and cycling to Jægersborg Dyrehave. I showed her Bakken, the world’s oldest operating amusement park, and we took in the views of the beautiful park. We saw at least a hundred deer in the field by the park’s “palace,” which is home to the Danish Royal Family’s hunting and soirée… hub, for lack of a better word. We later checked out Christiania and all it had to offer, and then headed to Tivoli Gardens, also known as Halloweentown this time of year. We watched the “witch parade,” got scared in their Hotel Scary, admired all the beautiful decorations, and rode a giant chain swing which Maggie thought she was going to die on (spoiler: she didn’t die). This night, we decided to watch the film Halloweentown which is a huge step down from Annabelle, and not scary in the slightest. But it is a childhood classic of mine, so I was excited to watch it… except for the fact that I completely passed out about ten minutes into the film and woke up during the credits… it’s a good thing I’ve already seen it so many times before.
On Maggie’s third and final day, we decided to do a little train trip across Denmark and Sweden within the Øresund region. I was really excited to do this trip as it would include many places I haven’t even been to myself. We started off by heading to Hillerød where we explored Fredeirksborg Slot and its gardens. After Hillerød, we took a train towards Helsingør, home of Kronborg Slot, also known as the castle which inspired Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The castle was beautiful, located right by the sea. With such a limited schedule, we only had a chance to enter the chapel and didn’t have time to explore the rest of the castle. Outside the castle, walking toward the centre of the town, we stumbled upon Han – the Little Mermaid’s brother? Except he’s a lot shinier and apparently blinks once every hour – creepy! The town of Helsingør was clean and quaint – a very pleasant area to walk around and relax in. From this town, we took the ferry over to Sweden’s Helsingborg. This is where I haven’t been before, so I wasn’t completely sure what there was to see or do in any of the upcoming places… but we went with the flow, and tried to find beautiful natural, historical, and/or cultural landmarks. The only thing we really found in Helsingborg are some stairs where you can walk up and see a nice view of the city. Other than that, the city looks fairly industrialized outside of its cozy centre. Lund was our next stop, and this was the town in Sweden that I was most excited about visiting that day. I applied to the university in Lund, and it was one of the ones that I was considering most. Unfortunately for Lund, it wasn’t able to win me over as much as Copenhagen did… but I was just about to find out how the town and university were really like – and not so surprisingly, I actually really liked it there! The campus of the university was very similar to mine back home, and it was something that I missed… a lot! The town (including its residents) was very nice, welcoming, and cozy. Maggie and I decided to have some Swedish sausages for dinner here as well (but it was not as fancy as you’re probably thinking right now). Our final stop was Malmö. And because of how dark it was by this point, and the fact that everything was closed, we only ended up walking around for thirty minutes or so, and then heading back home to Copenhagen. That night we watched another film… I believe it was Halloweentown 2, but there was another night we watched Sinister as well (a legitimately good scary film)… I’m definitely mixing something up!
Regardless of the films, it was a pleasure having Maggie stay with me for the few days! We had a blast together, and managed to make the most of our time together. Check out some of the photos from our Øresund trip, below.
swckwrzsk.wordpress.com 