Expedition Edition 12: Copenhagen and Ærøskøbing, Denmark

Copenhagen is one of Europe's finest cities. I'd seen it from the air many times and didn't hold that opinion, but once we set our feet on the ground, Maggie and I really enjoyed it.

One of the highlights of our three nights in Copenhagen was spending the evening at the Tivoli theme park, which is probably one of the finest theme parks I've been to. It's not easy to articulate what's so special about Tivoli, but much of it has to do with the careful and thoughtful planning that went into it. Tivoli isn't huge, but the design of it makes Six Flags feel like a Walmart parking lot.

Thoughtful and cozy design seems to go into a lot of Danish things, which is part of the hygge way of living the Danes enjoy. Maggie even bought the book on hygge (pronounced hoo-ga, but pronounced hi-gie in our household), so we could implement some hygge-y changes when we get home. I think it mostly amounts to lighting more candles.

We also enjoyed visiting the hippie mecca, Christiania, and climbing to the top of Vors Frelsers Kirke. Vors Frelsers is a spired church that tested our fear of heights as we ascended the increasingly narrow staircase on the outside of the spire to get the best view of Copenhagen we could.

After three nights in Copenhagen, we decided to leave the rat race behind and head to the small island town of Ærøskøbing. Ærøskøbing is on the island of Ærø, which is a sleepy hygge island perfect for unwinding and biking around. The Ærø flag is also freakin' identical to the Lithuanian flag, which is great, but led to major disappointment when I discovered the flags in front of people's homes didn't signify a bunch of Lithuanians lived there.

We are now on a series of trains to get to Berlin. As soon as we entered Germany, passport control entered the train car and asked the people next to us for their passports, but not us. They happened to be brown, but I'm sure that had nothing to do with it. Way to go, Germany...

Photos are below! Thanks again for reading.