GirlsGetaway is delighted to introduce an ongoing travel series by Sarah Emery, a university student with an insatiable lust for travel. She recently returned from a long term backpacking trip through Europe with two of her girlfriends and has agreed to share tales of her adventures with our readers. Here’s the second story in our series: Sarah Travels on a Budget. To check out other stories in the series click here.

In these first couple of articles I’m going to give an overview of what Carly and I got up to Copenhagen, Denmark. It was just the two of us until we met up with Winna, the third member of our travel group, later in Europe.

First on our Agenda: Exploring Copenhagen on a Bike

Copenhagen is the land of biking, and public transportation is really expensive, so renting a bike was super convenient. It was a great deal too, $50 for an entire week. We spent a lot of our time in the city just biking around admiring the sights – Strøget, the Rundetaårn, Amalienbourg Palace, the Marble Church, various galleries and museums, all that stuff.

One of the greatest bike trips we had was late in the evening of one of the first days Carly was here. Summer days in Copenhagen are really long – by the time June 21st comes along, Copenhagen gets up to 20 hours of sunlight per day. The sun was setting, and we were biking around the twisted, cobbled streets of downtown. We didn’t know where we were, and we didn’t care. We just turned down whichever teensy little street caught our fancy, stumbling across beautiful little squares and watching as the city turned purple and the lights got all twinkly. Beautiful.

Bakken Sucks but We Loved Tivoli

Tivoli is a beautiful amusement park, the second oldest in the world (the first oldest amusement park in the world is also in Denmark – it’s called Bakken, and we went there, and it really sucked). We came in the late afternoon and stayed until well after it got dark. The rides are not really the main attraction at Tivoli – they’re SUPER expensive, for one thing.

Mostly it was just the atmosphere that we were after – the whole park is covered in these old cool twinkly lights and big beautiful gardens. We just wandered around. We happened upon this children’s area, which amused us to NO END. It was like a fake pirate ship thing, and we went in and frolicked and injured ourselves. Also we found this big wide expanse of open space, with these huge spotlights that would change colors. We took several pictures here.

Nyhavn + Beer = Magic

One of the things to do in Copenhagen is to sit by Nyhavn in the evening and have a beer. Nyhavn is the medieval harbor in the main downtown core of Copenhagen. If you’ve ever seen pictures of Copenhagen, Nyhavn is probably what you’ve seen – rows of beautiful, brightly colored old houses right next to an ancient canal. The harbor is so old, modern boats can’t fit in there. So only antique boats are allowed, which just adds to the greatness of it.

We had our one traditional Danish meal at a restaurant right on the canal, and we sat outside. Afterwards, we found a spot along the water, polished off a couple beers, and sat and talked while the sun set. ‘Twas magical.