Day 3: Malmö to Copenhagen

The weather forecast originally hadn't been too bad for today, but when we opened the curtains this morning it was pouring with rain. We didn't have to check out of the hotel until midday, so we made the most of the hotel's breakfast buffet before setting out for a slightly damp walk around Malmö.

Our first stop was Lilla Torg (Little Square) where we had stopped for a drink last night.

From the there we made our way towards the town library, which our friend Kalle had drawn our attention to last night.

It was even more impressive in the daylight and we couldn't believe how large and grand it was just for a normal library!

The rain was intermittent so we decided to chance another walk through the park.

We passed some of the sights from the previous day again, like the windmill.

We also found some new sights, like this statute of a boy with geese. But luckily there weren't any geese on the lakes in the parks; only ducks!

Soon it was time to walk back into the town towards our hotel so that we could pick up our stuff.

We were planning to go straight from the hotel to the train station and travel back to Copenhagen, but as we walked towards the station we caught sight of the harbour area, which we hadn't had chance to explore yet.

When we turned around we had a really good view of the tall hotel building whose bar we had visited yesterday evening.

We walked along the seafront for a while.

I particularly liked this little lighthouse

After about twenty minutes or so we got to the end of the pathway and could see nothing put the open sea behind us.

We turned around to walk back to the main train station.

When we arrived at the station, the good news was that the line appeared to have been repaired since yesterday and it looked like all the trains to Denmark ought to be running as normal. There was a train scheduled for 12.33 and we had about ten minutes to spare, which was just enough to buy the tickets in the machine and find the platform. We had just got down the escalator to the platform, however, when there was a sudden announcement saying that the 12.33 to Copenhagen was cancelled. Oh no!

The trains are supposed to run every twenty minutes, so we decided to hang around for the 12.53 and see whether that one was running. I was really hoping that we weren't going to end up on a rail replacement bus again! Thankfully, when it got to 12.53 the train did arrive, and though it was extremely busy with two train's worth of people trying to cram in, we even managed to get seats. Soon we were speeding on our way to Denmark

The journey was extremely quick and we were already at Copenhagen airport within twenty minutes, then in Copenhagen itself ten minutes later. No one was interested in checking passports on the way back to Denmark, which I guess made things quicker. You could get a bit of a view of the sea from the train window as we went across the bridge, but the train was moving so fast that it just came out as a blur when I tried to take a photo.

The weather seemed to be a little bit brighter in Copenhagen, which was good. I wanted to try and see some of the parts of the city that we hadn't had chance to explore on Saturday, so we crossed a bridge across the harbour which took us to the Christianshavn district.

As we began to walk through Christianshavn, we caught sight of this church with a very interesting tower.

It reminded us both of a helterskelter!

It turned out to be the Church of Our Saviour, which was originally built in 1682 but didn't get its spire until 1752.

It was about 2pm by this point and we were absolutely starving, so we started looking out for places to eat. There didn't seem to be a lot of choice in this part of town, but eventually we came across a restaurant where the prices didn't look too extortionate, by Danish standards at least!

Tim decided to order a taster board of several different beers, and I had a nice glass of wine.

I ordered lasagne for my main course, but when it arrived I was rather surprised. It looked more like a wrap then any lasagne I'd ever seen before!

It turned out that it was a wrap, coated in breadcrumbs and stuffed with mince and - slightly oddly - some ricotta cheese. It was all sitting in a tomato sauce, and finished off with some tortillas. It sounds a bit strange but it was actually quite a nice combination, though very filling.

Unfortunately while we were eating lunch, the Danish weather seemed to take a bit of a turn for the worse. It rained on and off for the rest of the afternoon, though mostly not very heavily. We walked out of Christianshavn across the main bridge, which took us past the exchange and parliament buildings which we had seen on Saturday.

I wanted to see some of the parks in Copenhagen which we hadn't had time to visit on Saturday. First of all we went to Kongens Have (The King's Garden), which was beside the pretty Rosenborg castle.

We emerged from the park next to the national art museum, which had quite a grand building.

Behind the museum there is was another long park with a lake. We got caught in a bit of a downpour there, but the weather began to brighten up a bit again when we came out the far end of it at beside Kastellet.

Kastellet is an unusual star-shaped fortress, which we had passed a couple of times on our way to see the Little Mermaid statue.

The fortifications are surrounded by a wide moat and huge green embankments.

We crossed a bridge and went in through one of the gates to see what was inside.

I was expecting that there might be some sort of castle, but what we found instead were rows and rows of red houses.

These were terraces built in the seventeenth century as barracks for the soldiers who were stationed here.

We climbed up onto the green ramparts and had a stroll around. There was a lovely view of the English church which we had seen the other day.

We could also see the imposing dome of the marble church in the distance.

And of course, we had lots of views of the red houses

The rain was starting to get a bit worse again by this point and it was time to set off for the airport and our flight back to Luton. We got to the airport a bit early, so were able to make use of the free wi-fi there to do this blog We've had a lovely weekend in Denmark and Sweden and it definitely feels like longer than two days ago since we left the UK. Both of the cities that we've visited have been beautiful but have felt incredibly expensive compared to Slovakia!!