Copenhagen – Breakfast, The National Museum, Torvehallerne Market, and the Coffee Collective

It kind of goes without saying that Denmark and Norway are not the most inexpensive places to visit.

So having breakfast provided by your hotel really does help. I've spoken to folks who had two meals a day in Copenhagen; they filled up on breakfast and then had dinner.

And based on our experience everyone does take advantage of the breakfasts. The selection was not bad; decent cheeses, the tomatoes tasted really good. The Missus really liked the very rustic, traditional Danish Rye bread; Rugbrød. I took a little longer….at first, the hard seeds and really dry texture made me call it simply "rug". But over time it grew on me. As you can tell from this breakfast, I was still in "rug" mode.

I really did enjoy the Skyr……something I really enjoyed in Iceland. And the breakfast did indeed fill us up as we weren't hungry until dinner.

While we were headed out on this day; our overnight cruise to Oslo wasn't leaving until the afternoon. So we went ahead and checked out, storing our bags for later.

We now had to figure out what to do? The Missus decided on visiting the National Museum of Denmark which ended up being a great idea. It was a nice walk across the Inner City.

It's quite a large museum, but we lucky and managed to somehow get on the museum "highlights tour" in English. The young lady was delightful. Stopping by all the major displays like the Egtved Girl and giving us the lowdown. This Bronze Age girl and national icon isn't Danish. In 2015, scientific analysis of the remains determined that she was not from Jutland, but probably from the Black Forest.

She also went over the importance of Amber to the Danish.

We learned some really fun things. Did you know that Viking men were quite vain and cared about their appearance? They were known to keep combs and grooming "kits". They also bathed once a week, unheard of in those days. And no, there's no evidence they wore those horned helmets!

At the end the young lady went over the concept of Hygge and it's importance to Danish culture.

We usually don't enjoy tours like this one because of the amount of people. But there was only 5 of us in the group, so it was a lot of fun.

The National Museum of Denmark
Prinsens Palais
Copenhagen, Denmark

We then took our time heading back to the hotel. Just a mere two blocks from our hotel was Torvehallerne Market which houses over 60 shops and food stands in two glass buildings.

And while we didn't have time to eat here on either leg of the trip, we'd stop by and just walk around looking at the various stands.

 

The produce stands between the two buildings had a some really great looking stuff.

We especially loved how the potatoes still had soil on them….like they'd just been pulled out of the ground a few minutes ago.

We decided to kill some time and take a break at the Coffee Collective. A very busy stand in the market.

The Missus had the Coffee Kombucha which was really fizzy. I had a super strong double espresso….jet fuel.

The Coffee Collective Torvehallerne
Vendersgade 6D
Copenhagen, Denmark

Soon enough, it was time head back to the hotel and pick up our bags. We'd have to get the bus to the DFDS terminal. We were taking the overnight cruise to Oslo. We had checked out the rather discreet bus stop before heading to the museum. Pick-up time for us was 215pm, so off we went.

Past Saint Andrew's Church.

Down Gothersgade, left on Øster Voldgade and voila! The bus had arrived just as we did and we got on quickly as I had prepaid transport. We were amazed at how full the bus got. I've read that a lot of folks do day trips, arriving from, say Oslo in the morning. Spending the day shopping and seeing the sights, then heading back in the afternoon for the return overnight trip.

The Missus had never been on a cruise before. She has a problem seeing the same people over and over again, so long cruises and tours are out. This was just an overnight cruise; think of it as your transportation and hotel room combined.

This was going to be interesting……