Copenhagen - three good days, two sore feet

A lovely city. Great canals and beautiful parks. Lots of good museums. A good city for walking and cycling...

Quick Tips:

The Copenhagen card, offering free entry to many sites, is a good option for many, but do your sums first. Many attractions only offer a discount rather than free entry with the card. It would be a sound bet if the weather is poor, making museums a better bet than parks.

Best Way To Get Around:

A great city to walk in, but wear decent shoes. Four days on the Inca trail a couple of months earlier: no feet problems...One day and the wrong shoes in Copenhagen: ugh! Alternatively, get smart and use the city bikes !!!

The DGI-Byen is a three star hotel just to the West of Copenhagen's central station and ten minutes walk from Tivoli. The hotel, built in 1999, has 104 rooms.

I booked a single room for a three day visit in September 2003. The room was small but clean, comfortable, not without rail noise and decorated in a modern Scandinavian style, with wooden floors and solid colour walls. I had a single bed, coffee making facilities and a TV with around a dozen channels in Danish, English and German. The bathroom had a shower but no bath. Internet access was nominally available through the TV and a keyboard available from reception, though I failed to achieve a connection.

Included in the price was a buffet breakfast served in the hotel restaurant each morning. This consisted of bread, fruit, ham, cheese, cereal, boiled eggs, yoghurt, danish pastries, with coffee and fruit juice. A good opportunity for a decent start to the day and if need be, a chance to get away with a light lunch.

The unique selling point with the DGI-Byen is its sporting facilities. DGI stands for the "Danish Gymnastic Institute" and the hotel is only part of a complex which includes a swim centre, a spa, a bowling alley and a gymnasium. Indeed the first view many will get of the hotel when arriving from the station is the 18m high climbing wall which acts as sign post for the complex.

While these facilities can be used by anyone on a pay per visit basis, hotel guests have free access to the pool and are entitled to a basic spa treatment during their stay.

I never made use of the spa; however, I did get my money's worth in the swim centre. The swim centre consists of a number of pools located in two halls. In the first hall is a fun pool which also has jacuzzis. In the second hall is a very innovative pool. This consists of an oval pool in which to swim laps - each of which is a full 100m. In the centre of this pool is a smaller pool with a hydraulic floor to allow its depth to be changed. This tended to be used by youngsters with pool toys and was also used for teaching purposes. The second hall was completed with a dive pool, which in addition to dive platforms featured a climbing wall from which to jump. The pools had attendants though these seemed to be fewer than I am used to in the UK.

The changing room shower area also offered a sauna which guests were free to use. Bring a 20kr for your locker - you get it back afterward.

In conclusion, the hotel offered a modern take on three star facilities. The staff were professional and the hotel is strongly recommended if you feel that during your visit, you would like to escape the city for a bit and do a little relaxing.

Copenhagen, like a number of European cities, offers a free bicycle system, and this can be a real bonus for the visitor in what is sometimes a rather expensive city.

The city is bicycle-friendly, and bikes are the commuting method of choice for many locals. The flat landscape encourages this, and most of the busiest city roads have cycle lanes. There are also bike racks in many sites around the city. This cycle-friendliness, however, is not without its problems for the casual tourist, as during rush hour the cycle lanes themselves can be very busy.

The city has invested in around 1300 of the free cycles, which can be picked up at up to 125 sites around the city centre. These include Nyhaven, the Central Station, Amalienborg and Christianshavn. To use one, you will need a 20-kroner piece (~ UK£2, US$3). There is no booking or formal rental - simply find a free bike at one of the special sites and use it. Pushing the 20Kr coin into a special lock on the handlebar releases it from the chain connecting it to the bike rack. Kick up the stand and away you go. When you are finished, just park up at any recognised site and chain the bike back up, releasing your 20 kroner.

The bikes themselves are fairly basic. To keep maintenance to a minimum, they are single-gear, use solid rubber tyres, and brake using a backpedaling system fitted to the rear wheel. There are no hand-operated brakes. You do, however, have a simple bell which is operated by flicking the outer shell with a thumb, and a map of the city centre is also mounted on the handlebars. In general, the bikes are well maintained. The scheme has repair vans which tour the pick-up sites.

I found the bikes to be an excellent way to quickly nip around the major tourist sites within the Copenhagen city centre. Back in Scotland, I commute to work every day and so enjoy cycling. I would, however, offer one or two pointers, whether you are an experienced cyclist or not.....

Top tips :

• Stick to the far right on the cycle lanes, allowing locals plenty of room to pass. That ringing in your ears isn't tinitis, but a busy Dane behind you sprinting to work...
• Don't get too enthusiastic - the bikes can get up to a bit of speed when pushed. Managing controlled, sudden stops can be a different manner - more than once, I found myself instinctively panicking, grabbing for non-existent brake levers, before remembering to backpedal.
• First time out, try and get a bit of practice on the bike on a quiet side street if possible. If you haven't used them before, the backpedal brake takes a bit of practice, and I tended to find them a bit abrupt until I got familiarised properly.
• The cycle lanes are unidirectional, so you should be cycling on the right and following the main traffic flow. You need to cross the road to get back to where you've been.
• Talking of which...some of the junctions can be very busy. Play it safe - if in doubt, I suggest getting off and using the pedestrian crossings to push the bike to the next section of road.
• The seat height adjusts, so it is always worth making use of this for comfort and safety.
• Don't abuse the system. Take the bike back to a proper rack and stay within the city centre. A set of "ten commandments" for the use of the cycles can be found at the scheme's official website, www.bycyklen.dk
• The scheme runs from early May to the middle of December each year, so don't rely on them for winter transport.

A really excellent system. Very much recommended - enjoy, but take care.

I thought we had a date. I was going to be in town for a few days and thought I should look her up. A lot of folks seemed to think she was a bit aloof -- I could see what they were getting at. I don't think she'd ever spoken to them, that might have been it.

It was a lovely late summer day. Clear skies with just the odd bit of high cloud. I stopped off at a bakery and got some pastries, nice ones with apple and raisins, some fruit juice, a little fruit, apples, and bananas -- not too sure what she liked these days.

In retrospect maybe I should have called. On the way down from the hotel I bumped into her father in the city square. He seemed to look away toward the Tivoli Gardens as I approached. I don't think I'd done anything to offend him, but he certainly didn't seem to want to chat. I complimented him on his hat, but he never mentioned that there was anything up with the girl.

I was told she was usually to be found down by the river a little past the Royal Palaces. I went down by Nyhaven, then past the big ferries heading to Sweden snf Norway. As I got nearer I started to get a little nervous - "should have made that call", "what if she's got a bloke ?", "what if he's big ?", "what if he's the angry, possessive type ?".

She was gone though. The girl, she stood me up.

I got annoyed, but it wasn't her fault. Some thugs had knocked her into the river. It was bad but she'd be OK. It would be at least a month until she'd be out again, and now I couldn't visit.

I hoped the little fish girl would be fine.

The "Little Mermaid" was blown off her rock by vandals on September 11th, 2003, shortly before my visit. A notice at the site stated that repairs would take at least one month to be completed.