24 Hours In Denmark Travel Guide

We have Disney, Denmark has Tivoli. A very very magical place. It started with this guy right here. How did he like even invent this place back in the day? 1843? He stole the idea actually from a park in Paris that was called Tivoli. Really? But none of the original parks exist. It's only the Copenhagen one that that has managed to survive through to today. How many rides are there? Well at the moment we have 26. Half kiddie rides and half really wild wild white knuckle type rides. White knuckle. This ride looks interesting. Yeah it's probably our wildest ride. It's called the Vertigo. Would you believe? I can see why it'd be called that, yes. With the power that's in the movement of the ride. Can you imagine when it decelerates? All the power that's in actually slowing it down. Yeah it stores it. So we pick up that power and reuse it. 25% of the electricity that the Vertigo uses is actually regenerating. That's very cool. So we're behind the scenes. This is one of the oldest roller coasters I know that I've ever been around. Yeah 1914. There are only six roller coasters this kind of age in the world. So the brakeman actually sits here. How does he work it? What you do is you pull this lever towards you thereby pressing the metal wings so it's actually the friction that brakes the car. There's more to Tivoli than just the rides. We have the rides of course and then the scenery. I hope you can see how pretty that is and all the architecture. The wining and dining. Everything from hot dogs to gourmet meals and then we have all the entertainment. So there's free music every day. Once you're paid admission you get free concerts. There are shows you pay for. There's ballet. There's classical music. There's all sorts of things. Here's a pleasant surprise. Our most unique Next Stop music segment ever. That's so cool what you guys do. Thank you. What are the age ranges? Around eight years to 16. I'm 16 now and I've been in the guard five, six years. So I'm looking forward to... You're retiring. Exactly, yeah. I'm actually, actually I'm, yeah. Hi to all and welcome. My name is Julia and I will be your guide on this tour. We are now in the canal of New Houn and this canal was excavated between 1671 and 1673. The purpose was that the ships could sail all the way into the city's new center where the king's new square is with their goods. You can now see the Royal Theater's Playhouse. The Playhouse opened in 2008 with Shakespeare's Hamlet. It was designed by two Danish architects that are called Lundgaard and Tranberg. The Opera House here on the right side opened in 2005. It was designed by a Danish architect that is called Henning Larsen. The ship you see on the right side is the Royal Yacht that is called Danepro. It was built in 1931 and it's the oldest royal yacht in the whole world that is still in use today. You can now also see two identical buildings on the right hand side. There's actually four of these buildings and this is Amalienborg. Amalienborg is the royal residence since 1794. We are now in Gammelstrand, which means the old beach. It is here that the modern city of Copenhagen was founded in 1167 by the Bishop Absalon. You can see a statue of him on the left hand side. He's on his horse. On the right side you can now see the most modern castle of Christiansborg. It is the third castle with this name in this spot and it is from 1928. The building on the right hand side is the old Stock Exchange. It was built between 1620 and 1640. The tower is made of four intertwined dragon tails and on the top there's three crowns that symbolize the calmer union. We are now back to where we started so the tour is over. Me and Jens hope you enjoyed it. Have a nice day and thank you for a nice tour. What are the highlights for you on the tour? Royal residence and the canal of Christentown which is for me breathtaking and the oldest part of the city. Now we also sailed by the most popular number one restaurant in the world, Noma. Have you been there? No, I haven't. There's a three months waiting list now and the top waiting time was one year, I think, in the beginning. Now it's three months. I think we'll dine right over there at the local closest stand. Thank you for your time today. Yeah, no problem. The changing of the guard takes place every day at noon at Amaljeborg Palace. The purpose of the royal guard is to protect Denmark's royalty, especially Queen Margaret II, the first female monarch in Denmark since the 15th century. This is sometimes accompanied by music if the queen is in residence, but if you take a look at that building over there, the only one with five chimneys, there's no flag flying. No flag, no queen. For more information on this and other fun activities in Denmark, go to visitdenmark.com. Fresbrook Slot, or castle, located in Hillehul, a town about 42 kilometers north of Copenhagen, is the oldest renaissance palace in Scandinavia, dating back to the early 17th century. It also houses the Museum of Natural History. Hello, farragudet. I'm John. Hello, John. My name is Sam. Welcome to Fresbrook. Thank you for inviting us to your home. Oh, you're welcome. This is a nice place you live. Oh, it's a very nice place. Okay, you don't live here. No, I don't live here. Who did? Well, in the 17th century, the Danish king lived here. His name was Christian IV, and he was one of the most wealthiest persons in northern Europe. And when you're wealthy, you need, of course, a grand house. I'm dying to see the inside. Well, let's go inside then. Let's do it. This is an absolutely gorgeous room. It is one of the favorite spots at the museum. It's also the spot where you can see the kind of decoration which the old castle were made with. It's again made to impress. It's what renaissance is about. You have to be dazzled. Let's talk about the shields on the wall. This is impressive. They must have deep meaning. It is going back to when Denmark was an absolute monarchy. Whenever a person is getting one of these shields, he will have his coat of arms made and painted, and he has the shield put up here. Well, you remember that I told you that the Danish king was very wealthy? Yes. He was also very practical. So you're now in the basement of the castle. It's his treasury. But instead of walking down all the stairs with the money, he would slide the coins through the slide down into this large chest. Søren, this is one impressive display of art. How many pieces are in here? Well, we say we have approximately 10,000 paintings, but apart from paintings, we have engravings, we have etchings, we have furniture, we have chairs, we have cupboards. So earlier today, Søren promised us that he would show us where he had his wedding reception, and wow, this is pretty cool, Søren. It is. No wonder it's called the great room. But this is a great room. It is, and I wish I had. But it is a great room, and it was built by Christian IV for having parties, functions. I can only imagine. You've got a nice office. Thank you. Talk for having us. Same time. Danish design is well respected throughout the world. To learn more, we visit the Danish Design Center. We begin our tour through history of Danish design in the 1950s. What was going on in the 1950s? 1950 was just after the war, so there was not that much money, but there was a huge power to create something. So a lot of the things you see here is created at that time, and the thing was that there were new materials. LEGO is there. LEGO started in like 1952. Denmark is a nation of play. We like to work hard, but we also like to play, and LEGO is just you're not supposed to do whatever you were told by your parents. You could just dream away. That's the great thing about LEGOs, and that hasn't changed all the way to the day. It hasn't changed, and you see even adults still playing with LEGO now. They put a lot of computers in them, so you can do things like robots. The psychedelic 60s. It is, yes. That's what we call the hippie thing, the flower power of things. What happened was that when we looked at the 50s, it was all natural materials, so plastic was introduced. We had this fantastic designer called Werner Pansen. He did this chair and all these environments, psychedelic things. At the same time, getting back to your roots, you also had this television thing by Bang & Olufsen, which was a little bit spacey. This is modern. That's cool. I think it's really cool. It was in my home when I was a kid. Now we're in the 70s when I was a kid. I would have liked this thing. Oh, you should have had one. The 70s was sort of like systems, and the 80s was about systems. How can we get systems to work? The whole idea was there was not just one thing. It was everything. A lot of that is still current today too, though, because these are the same taps in our hotel room. Yes, and I have them at home, and I think my kids will always have them at home, so they're here. If it ain't broke, why fix it? So now we arrive at the 90s. Yeah, but let's skip the 90s. We didn't do much cool design in the 90s. Let's go to the next. So now we're in the new millennium, and I love this. That is super cool. That's fantastic. That's a one-off. Is it? But it is a cool thing, and also the lamp is telling you that now materials can do that, and technology is going into design. Niel, I'm impressed. Thank you very much for the tour through time, and I can see why Danish architecture, Danish design has been so relevant for so many decades, and for decades to come. Yeah, come back in 10 years, and we will show the next part. I'd love to. See you. Bye. Copenhagen is one of the most ambitious cities in the world when it comes to sustainable lifestyle. By the year 2025, Copenhagen plans to be the world's first capital city that is CO2 neutral. Bikes are just one of the ways Copenhagen tries to stay green. They're by far the fastest and least expensive way to get around, and of course, they emit no CO2. Copenhagen is truly a green city. We're staying at the very lovely and very historic Admiral Hotel in Copenhagen. Jesper, thanks for having us. Thank you, and you're welcome. This is a gorgeous property, and I love the history of it. Take us back to 1787. It used to be a storage place for corn and grain. We had a lounge, which was part of our banqueting department. That used to be the oven, drying out most of the granary. So all the floors housed the grain and corn? Yeah, exactly, yeah. And there were very historic events that happened at this hotel. It was very key in 1801. Yeah, exactly. What happened then? We had the bombardment of Copenhagen, but we survived. Most of the buildings around the hotel were on fire. It's a big part of Copenhagen history. Your location is spectacular. We're right on the water. Of course, it's a hotel. Everything is fairly close by. We've got the queen living just down the road. Queen's your neighbor? Yeah, she is. And of course, we've got the view of the water. One thing that's unique, I think, is the hallway. When you walk down, the woodwork on the ceiling. All the hallways and all the wood and the walls, that is the original thing from when it was built. And when you walk in your lobby, it's very impressive. It's very long. There's lots of depth to it. And your staff is so friendly. Everybody's been so friendly the entire stay. And you've got an award-winning restaurant. We do, yeah. The Salt Restaurant. It's been with us for quite a few years now. There's something you have that's very different from any hotel we've ever stayed at. We do have the water, and together with the water, we do have the ships. As you can see, this is a very impressive property with a history dating back to the start of our country. On your next trip to Copenhagen, we recommend you stay at the Copenhagen Admiral Hotel. The food scene in Copenhagen is thriving. In fact, for the last three years running, they have the number one rated restaurant in the world. For our food feature today, we're on the main walking street, the Stroll, to feature the Royal Café, which is anything but your average café. Let's smooshy. I have been so excited to learn about your concept, not only about smooshy, but café. You've taken it to a whole new level. Our idea was to sort of emphasize everything that had been famous in the past, which was smørrebrød, open-faced sandwiches. Which is very well known in Denmark. Yes. So we thought, why not do it in a modern, more up-to-date way? Not have huge open-faced sandwiches, but maybe have small, tasty. You can try more things that way. Yeah. You know, as you can see in front of us, we have three smooshies standing here. This is the ox fillet, beef fillet, or call it how you like, with a good old Danish tomato. This is new potatoes, new cucumber. This is what we would call a vegetarian dish. Has a little radish. The next one here is actually very interesting. It's called in Danish, stjerneskud, which means a shooting star. If you see it from above it, the way it's made, it looks like a star. Now, I feel like your cafe here, because this room is beautiful. I feel like we're having afternoon high tea. You can see something there, a hand-painted wall, or you can see one of these old paintings from our castle. Why not give people that experience? This is the most unique cafe we've ever been to, and this is absolutely a wonderful presentation. Congratulations. Thank you. That's awesome. You're redefining it. Thank you very much. Thank you for coming. We hear that Copenhagen has one of the most active nightlifes in Europe. Let's find out for ourselves. We begin our night at Ice Bar Copenhagen. It's summertime in Copenhagen, and we're at an ice bar, an actual ice bar. I thought there might just be a little bit of ice around, but we're talking full-on ice here, Pablo. What we have in here is 40 tons of natural ice all brought from north of Sweden. What is she making here behind us? She's making a drink. It's called Construction. Our theme is factory, so all the names of our cocktails are related to the theme. These glasses are all ice as well? Exactly. They're special. What does it take to keep these things in stock? We keep them in the bar. Because once I put my mouth to it, it starts melting, right? Exactly. Once you're done drinking them, we have a slide just there where you throw them, and then afterwards we will just get rid of them. How cool was that? No pun intended. Our next stop, something equally unique, Ruby's. I love your place. So quaint, so different, so unique. I think it's a little bit unique, a little bit intimate, and still extremely friendly, and it's really simple. Just treat people with respect and try and have fun while doing it. I think that's a good philosophy. Upstairs is a little more happening, whereas downstairs is a bit more quiet, and we try and do a bit more old-school menu with forgotten classics that we sort of flip through all our cocktail literature and found these interesting drinks that we don't see much anymore, and try and revive some of the old classics. Visit Denmark told me that you guys make some classic cocktails. I have to come and check it out. I have one of the signature drinks we do for you in a minute. We're going to go to the bar and have a drink called the Rapscanion. So the other night my camera guy and I, Mike, were rolling down the street looking for a pub, just a place to have a beer, an ull, and relax, and we came upon this place and we loved it. Walking in here, seeing the art in the wall, this is my idea of a real neighborhood pub. But it wasn't always a pub. Actually, it was a grocery store since the 60s, and there was this old man down here selling mostly wine and liquor, and in the back in there he also, you know, invited his customers on a schnapps, right? So already in the 60s it was actually a bar. You guys have a very special place. We love it, and I would love to end our nightlife segment by taking our schnapps, and having it in the back room. Yes, let's go now. Thanks for joining us on Next Stop from wonderful Copenhagen, and thanks to our Danish show sponsors, Visit Denmark, Wonderful Copenhagen, the Admiral Hotel, and Icelandair, another great Alaska Airlines partner with convenient connections to all of Europe through Reykjavik. Thanks also to our show's title sponsors and good friends, Alaska Airlines and the Alaska Airlines Visa Signature Card. Next stop, where will we take you next? Make good memories, everybody. Denmark has Tivoli, turning a hundred years old. This next year? Well, more than a hundred years. So, 1843. Oh, that's way more. Let's start that over. The roller coaster is a hundred years. You taught her. You taught her everything she knows. Well, not everything, I guess.