Back in the February half term, we went to Copenhagen for a few days. Having been in the summer too, we were excited to see the city in a different season and visit new places. We were nervous about travelling when the COVID-19 Pandemic was getting worse around us. (The first case in Denmark was reported a week after we’d been there). Anyway, here’s what we got up to while we were there. All the posts from this series can be found here.
Day Two
Today was the main feature of this trip to Copenhagen and why we were coming in February. The great thing about being in a hostel is that they often provide breakfast (usually at an extra charge to your room but it’s often cheaper than “going out” for breakfast). There were lots of choices which was good. It was your usual continental breakfast kind of thing but there was also fruit, cereal, yoghurt and other choices.
After breakfast and getting our things together for the day, we headed to the Metro Station at Skjolds Plads and took the Metro from there to Frederiksberg where we changed onto the M1 line to go to the Bella Center. (It’s like Copenhagen’s version of the ExCel Centre in London). At the front and back of the driverless trains, they had these stickers, so kids could pretend to be driving the train. Every time we got on a metro train, if there was a space at the front, Jaxon was there pretending to drive the train. He would even turn around to make sure all the people were on or off the train before pressing on the sticker to “close” or “open” the doors.
The station at the Bella Center is above ground so as soon as we pulled into the station we could see the Lego flags outside of the exhibition centre.
We headed inside and there was so much to see! We started in the Fribyg (Free Play) area where there were lots of Lego bricks to play with. Jaxon and Chris got playing but I retreated to the side and sat with my back against the wall while doing my knitting while I could. (Why do exhibition centres never have enough seats? We went to Alexandra Palace when I was pregnant with Jaxon and I ended up sitting on the floor there too because there weren’t enough seats!)
After convincing Jaxon to move onto the next bit, we headed further into the centre to see what we could find. We found the GBC (Great Ball Contraption) which was kind of what we had come for and it was even more impressive than it is when we see it on YouTube. (This is a walk around of the GBC at Copenhagen). Chris was having a great time looking at all the little bits but Jaxon was getting more impatient and wanted to move onto the next thing. I don’t think we’d quite released how big the event was and could have done with bringing lunch with us. As it happened, I had a big bar of chocolate in my bag and we were able to buy drinks. They were even more expensive than the usual Copenhagen prices but it would keep us going until we could go elsewhere to get some lunch. We worked our way around some more of the different exhibitions but Jaxon was flagging. Between the late night and the lack of food, he was being very grumpy and stroppy.
While Jaxon spent some time at one of the other free play sections, Chris went to take a look at a stand labelled “Lego Produktion”. Chris managed to find a spare stool at one of the building tables, so I could sit on that with my knitting and keep an eye on Jaxon. I think he was very excited to see the machine making Lego bricks, his excitement went up just a bit higher when he was told you could get your own printed brick. He asked me if I’d like it instead as he could only get two but I said that as much as I would like it I know that he and Jaxon would appreciate it so much more than I probably would.
Near the free play area we were sat at was the “Plants for Plants” display which was all about the attempts to make Lego bricks from plant-based plastics rather than the plastics they use currently. Having had a play with the bricks you really couldn’t tell that they weren’t made of plastic plastic. This week in the news, there was an article about Lego ditching plastic bags in their sets and replacing the plastic with paper bags from 2021 – this is exciting and it’s great to see change. You can read the article here.
After exploring some more we decided that we needed to go get some lunch. Chris had looked at the map and found there was a supermarket a short walk away from the center so we headed there for lunch and had a little picnic. We decided that we head elsewhere int he city on our way back to the hostel. Following our late night, we were all a bit weary and needed to chill out a bit.
Our exploring trip on our way back involved getting off the Metro and took a walk through Christiania towards Nyhaven then we got back onto the Metro at Kongens Nytorv.
Christiania is an intentional community within Copenhagen. Within this area, there are a few extra rules to abide by one of which is to not take photos. So although there were some amazing colourful buildings that I would love to have taken photos of, I didn’t. There’s a lot of photos on the internet but if you’d like a video, I suggest watching this one by Kara and Nate. (First Impressions of COPENHAGEN (strangest place we’ve ever been))
Once we’d been for our walk and caught the Metro back to Skjolds Plads station, we headed up to our room to relax for a bit. We put on the TV to see whether there were any cartoons or something like that for Jaxon. We found the Disney Channel but all the cartoons were in German. Jaxon said that was fine and actually ended up completely glued to the TV for a little while.
This was the end of Day 2. I’m sure we must have gone to get some dinner but I now can’t remember what we did! (If I remember I’ll be sure to come back and add it!)
All the posts from this series can be found here.
