After traveling and seeing many different cities, my goal for visiting Scandinavia was to experience more of mother nature, escape from the hustle and bustle of city life, and just find some form of tranquility and peace. This might come across as ironic because I chose to go to the capital city of Denmark i.e. Copenhagen. If I wanted to avoid major cities, why would I choose to go to Copenhagen, of all the danish cities?
Well, Copenhagen is known to have one of the happiest people in the world, and after visiting, I finally got it.
Instead of heading to the typical shopping streets and main central area, I stuck by the river and canals, basically all the water bodies in Copenhagen, and it provided me with such a calm and serene experience - something very unexpected of a major city.
After having a nice breakfast with a view of a very colourful train station, I made my way off towards the main lake in the city centre, Lake Søerne. Walking along the lake in the morning is by far one of the most calming experiences ever. There was not many people in sight, the air was fresh, the birds were chirping, and the view of the colourful houses from one end of the lake was gorgeous.
As I walked along Lake Søerne I saw people cycling, couples having their morning jog, families pushing prams, children walking around, it was clearly an unanimous sentiment that it was a fine day, and that the sight of the lake and the houses was undeniably charming.
The single moment when I deviated from my path of "sticking by the waters", was when I saw rows and rows of barrack looking houses that were designed in the exact same way and painted the exact same colour. Such uniformity reminded me of Singapore; how our HDB houses look pretty much identical. This type of similarity in building and housing design is something very rare in Europe, so I headed off in to explore the area. But alas, I didn't discover anything and went back on my route towards The Little Mermaid.
Before arriving at the Little Mermaid, I passed by a star fortress called Kastellet. The shape of the river around the fortress was A STAR. It was impossible to get an aerial view of the whole fortress, but each defined bend of the river was part of an edge of a star, and I found that so fascinating that people chose to design a fortress in the shape of a star in that magnitude.
Eventually, I made my way past one of the Copenhagen Harbours and found myself face to face with The Little Mermaid (and a bunch of tourist mermaids posing with it - not shown in image).
Instead of taking a picture with the mermaid - it was really quite impossible considering the size of the mermaid and the people crowding around it - I decided to walk around it and take shots of her with the harbour as the backdrop.
This mermaid was given as a tribute to Hans Christian Andersen's little mermaid story. Looking at this pictures, she looks like the grown up version of little mermaid. Also, doesn't she look a little sad?
WHAT I WOREEven though there were quite a number of people surrounding the mermaid, it was not annoyingly crowded. Also, it meant that every where else along the harbour was pretty much EMPTY.
Coat: Coldwear.sg
Necklace: Primark
Shirt Dress: H&M
White Denim Jeans: Morgan
Boots: Topshop
Or, it might be because I was there in the spring? I can forsee this harbour getting pretty crowded in the summer, with people walking, biking, or just sitting around and enjoying the nice summer breeze.
I think it was a great decision to stay by the waters. Having the option to escape the city centre to a place with wide waters, a very calming presence, and almost no one else around, is such a nice way to take a break. No wonder the people are happy! They kind of have the best of both worlds - Living in a major city, yet having the nice balance of nature and the serenity of a small town!
Although I didn't do anything too touristy and basically just walked around the centre of Copenhagen, it was so easy to get around, and walking from place to place not only allows you to take in everything that you see at a leisure pace, but it's most importantly. FREE. Pleasure without a cost - other than aching feet, so remember to put on a nice comfortable shoe before you head along by the waters of Copenhagen!
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