When I was in first year, I spontaneously decided one weekend that I was going to book my first holiday by myself. By this point, I’d already been to Ireland (which I loved) but I went with a friend and afterwards I’d wanted to go somewhere by myself just to see if it was my sort of thing. So, when I decided to go on my first holiday, I looked at places like Berlin and Amsterdam but I got the impression that as great as those cities were, to some extent they were overrated. Eventually, I chose Copenhagen and I have never once regretted it being the first city I visited by myself.
I think what puts a lot of students off from visiting Scandinavia is the reputation it has for being super expensive in comparison to cities like Berlin. But my whole trip ended up costing less than £200 (that includes my spending money which I think is pretty good) and I spent an amazing three days walking alongside the canals and getting lost in the maze of cobbled streets and coloured houses.
I stayed in Vesterbro and I remember on the first day (despite having not slept for 24 hours), I forced myself to explore the city. One of the things I love the most about Copenhagen is you can get lost in the city centre but would somehow find your way back – and that’s exactly what happened to me. Within 20 minutes of walking, I stumbled across Nyhavn and one thing that really did surprise me was how it was right next to a busy square. But once you’re walking down the harbour, you forget completely! Even on that cloudy day I visited Copenhagen, Nyhavn still managed to look pretty and one of my happiest memories is sitting along the canal at night with a girl I made friends with there and playing cards with her.
Another thing I loved about Copenhagen was how there seemed to be an endless number of palaces just dotted around the city. Being a massive history lover, most of my time in Copenhagen consisted of walking around the city just to visit the palaces and I’m convinced that some of them could’ve easily come out of a Disney movie. That, coupled with the colourful houses and the canals, made for a really memorable solo holiday. It might be a bit more expensive in comparison to other cities in Europe but I think the best way to describe Copenhagen would be if Paris and Amsterdam had a baby and it’s definitely somewhere I’d happily visit again by myself.