Our journey to Copenhagen was uneventful and we were pleased to discover our hotel was just a few minutes walk from the station. We checked in and then headed for the bar for a beer and to make a plan for dinner.

A very helpful receptionist pointed us towards a restaurant almost across the street that specialised in traditional Danish food, we set off to see if we could get a table. The restaurant was very busy but the waiter found us a table on the pavement terrace, we were lucky that it was a mild evening and the fresh air was welcome, after five hours on the train. We all enjoyed a lovely meal but the portions were huge. Mark ordered a pork stew in paprika cream sauce, it was served in a cast iron cauldron and would easily have served all four of us, it came with a big bowl of really delicious mashed potato.

The next day we decided to walk through the centre of town to Nyhavn and pick up a boat tour of the waterfront area. Our walk took us past the Tivoli Gardens, apparently the third oldest amusement park in the world, it was funny to be walking along a city street and hearing the screams of people on rollercoasters and thrill rides on the other side of the hedge. Nyhavn is the canal dock lined with colourful houses familiar from tourist brochures promoting Copenhagen, it is very pretty and for many years was the home of Hans Christian Anderson.

The boat tour was very good, the English commentary was informative and entertaining. We heard about the history of the city and saw a naval frigate now mothballed and moored as a museum. The ship is famous for an incident known as the Oops Missile which was fired accidentally by the captain and wiped out a number of holiday homes on the Danish coast, one of them allegedly belonged to his mother-in-law but that hasn’t been verified. We also saw the Copenhagen Mermaid, and the Danish Parliament building, famous as the setting for the TV series Borgen.

Back at the hotel none of us felt like another restaurant meal, the hotel didn’t have a restaurant but they did have links to some local places that delivered food which could be eaten in the guestrooms or in the bar. Reception ordered two pizzas for us to share and we tucked ourselves discreetly in the corner of the bar to eat them. Over the course of the next hour or so several people asked where we had got the pizza, I wish we had been on commission, pizzas started appearing everywhere.

All too soon our time in Copenhagen was over and we started to prepare for an early(ish) departure for Oslo.