A couple of weeks ago Jim and I headed for Copenhagen for the Mikkeller Beer Celebration held there each year.
It was our first time in Copenhagen, so it was an adventure for both of us, and I’ll be honest, the start of what’s proving to be a very busy summer. Obviously, we were primarily there for the beer festival, but what’s fun about the city that week, is that a whole host of bars and restaurants have loads of beery events on, tap takeovers and the likes, so we have loads of places we could go to check out outside the festival! We also had an amazing meal lined up, that was a gift from our friends for Jim’s birthday.
Our flight in didn’t arrive until quite late, but, and maybe fortunately for us, Mikkeller have a bar at the airport, where, handily you could get your beer festival wristband, and also, grab a beer or two……. So right off the plane, we started the trip in style with a couple in their bar, and a drink each to take back to the hotel. We were also given a ‘loyalty’ style card of the Mikkeller venues, which meant we also got a couple of free shots of what can only be described as paint stripper! Lucky, we had nice beer to wash it down with!
But moving on……. This isn’t a guide to Copenhagen, you know I’m not comfortable doing ‘guides’ to places I’ve only been once, it’s more a bit of a recounting of what we did, where we went and places we enjoyed – because I am so aware we barely scratched the surface on what there’s to do in the city – and so much of our exploring was based around drinking beer!
Because I am a massive cliché, I made sure that I dragged Jim to see Nyhavn, and those brightly coloured shop and restaurant fronts. We didn’t eat down there as I’d got a little carried away in the pastry shop that morning and we might have had one, or two, too many Danish’s before leaving the hotel. (Oh, speaking of hotels, we stayed at the Moxy, which, whilst it isn’t in the city centre is SO easy to get to on the metro/underground and on the busses. It was clean and modern, and there were a couple of awesome bakeries nearby that kept us fed well in the morning.)
So, our first day was mostly spent just wandering about, getting a feel for the city and beyond Nyhavn, we didn’t really have much of a plan of action for the day time – because we were booked in for dinner at Gro, a rooftop restaurant on the Osterbro district of the city. It’s a small restaurant in a greenhouse on the roof of an old car garage, surrounded by a garden.
So, on the first day in Copenhagen we just wandered about. We found ourselves at the palace, watching the guards pace up and down, we saw rococo churches, ate open sandwiches and debated going in the Tivoli gardens………in the end though we decided we didn’t really have time, and it would probably be more sensible to go and get a beer instead! Obviously.
Dinner at Gro was absolutely amazing. The view from the top of the restaurant, and of it from the top of the fire escape I climbed up next to it, was stunning.
Our second day was spent at the Mikkeller Beer Celebration Copenhagen. MBCC has been long on my list of places to visit and drink, and my goodness, it did not disappoint. SO MANY EPIC breweries to try from across the world.
But before beer, there was Warpigs. I’m not sure if Jim was more excited for the beer, or the BBQ that day. I know it was going to be a close call for me. They were both well worth the trip to Copenhagen themselves.
The beer festival is an all you can drink affair. You get your glass on arrival and you can queue up at every stall you like to grab beers.
Day 3 in Copenhagen was a sunny one. So we decided to go for an explore around the city. Christiania was high on the agenda. As per the rules there are very few photos of the area. Then we headed over to Mikkellers Baghaven site, which is right next to the Reffen food market.
Our final day in Copenhagen was an odd one. We had a late late flight and our only plans were to have dinner at the Mikkeller’s Ramen to Bíiru in Vesterbro. So, we went to find brunch (ordinary, and in a touristy spot because all the hype places were busy AF)
Then during a wander about the city, we found the Rundetaarn, or the round tower, which apparently is the oldest functioning observatory in Europe. I was all kinds of obsessed with the sloping walkway upwards, and the fact that there was a poster for a roller blade competition down the roundtower. SO MUCH FUN. But the views were epic and it was only about £2 to get up there.
