..you're only lost if you know where you're going..
Posts tagged hotel
Two days in Copenhagen
Feb 17th
We arrived in Copenhagen at 8am in the morning after catching an overnight bus from Stockholm. It was a new experience for the both of us and I personally found it fairly comfortable.
It was Valentines Day, and when we arrived it was snowing lightly. Thankfully it was quite still compared to Stockholm and while the temperature was cold (-3 degrees Celsius) it was a lot more comfortable.
We had a hotel room for the night staying at a place called Hotel Alexandra. Travelling as a couple often presents itself with advantages – in this case we were able to find a last minute hotel room for cheaper than two beds in a hostel dorm. We booked it the day before and tried our luck with an 8.30am check in. Luckily the room was free. Hotel Alexandra is located right near the Tivoli and for walkers like us it couldn’t be in a better location.
The benefit of a hotel room is that you have a bathroom to wash clothes in and more space to dry them. Sure, you get privacy too, but at this point in the trip we were banking on doing a fair bit of washing! After washing the clothes and having a quick freshen up we went for a walk to see what we could find. Our first stop was the Botanical Gardens.
They are a bit different to those back in Australia and the one we saw in Singapore. Although flowering plants are few and far between, the snow brings it’s own beauty to the gardens. There was also an excellent greenhouse which was the perfect place for us to thaw out. From here we walked throughout Copenhagen aimlessly. We didn’t have a lot on our list of objectives here so it was nice to take it easy for a change.
Valentines Day ended with us finding an “eat all you can” pizza place called The Astor. Anyone who knows us would have a good idea of how much pizza we ate, and all for 59DKK! We went back to our room and watched some TV together ready to call it a day.
The day after we walked over to Amalienborg Palace to watch the Changing of The Danish Royal Guard. It has been pretty cool watching this in a few different countries now. I’d say Denmark has had the most impressive so far. After freezing in the cold for about an hour, the guards were changed and we were off on our way to Kastellet.
Nearby was a statue of The Little Mermaid, named after the story by Hans Christien Andersen. Interestingly enough, Copenhagen seemed like a fairytale place. The gardens and the snow, the lights at night, and the music! I swear they had Disney music playing when the trains arrived at the station.
On top of all of this it was even more of a fairytale for me; pretty much everyone in Copenhagen is a cyclist. The infrastructure is amazing, and according to the owner of a local bike store “the drivers have to watch out for bikes”, not the opposite that applies in Australia.
Short and sweet once again, just like Athens. While you could spend some time here exploring the day to day life, we both had a great two day visit.
Our Athens Adventure
Feb 4th
It’s been a short stay, but we’ve achieved what we wanted to. We landed in Athens two days ago at 7am local time after sitting on a 12 hour flight from Singapore. Weary from the predominantly sleepless night we just had, we left the plane and made our way to Greek Immigration.
Five minutes off of the plane and we were already amazed. There is a smoking section in the airport. Indoors! I think that’s when I truly realized that we were now in Europe.
We grabbed our bags and made our way to the train. Some sketchy Greek pronunciation from myself bought us two tickets to the train, where we boarded and made our way to Acropoli station. It was a pretty easy ride, with one train change at Syntagma station.
After leaving the train we made our way up to the quiet streets in the early morning. It was a nice relief from the humidity of Singapore. Around 11°c and fine. We checked into our hotel, Airotel Parthenon, literally 200m from the metro station, and had a shower. For anyone considering going to Athens, it’s a quality place. Cheap for young travellers like us, but has everything you need. It’s four star in Athens, probably equated to a 3 star in Adelaide, but it’s clean and it’s central – we could get to all the historical sites in anywhere between 1 minute to 20 minutes on foot. Since we are travelling together, it worked out cheaper than the backpackers place down the road, and this way we got our own shower and room – something we wanted after the long flight.
To see the Acropolis and other sites surrounding, it will set you back 12EUR. You can see the Parthenon from everywhere. It’s just so impressive. We were basically pinching ourselves the whole time we were here. It’s so surreal, and everything is just so much larger than life.
On the flip side, it’s almost as though every man and his dog (literally, I don’t know if people own these dogs, but there are dogs everywhere) is in on the deal. For the major tourist attractions of Greece, the gardens, paths, and all of the infrastructure surrounding seems somewhat makeshift. It looks as though they are constantly working on the Acropolis, however when you walk around, you can see where rubbish has been thrown after previous repair jobs.
For these reasons I have mixed emotions about Athens.
Enough negativity though, we both enjoyed this place. Yesterday’s lunch was at Thanassis, where we had some authentic lamb kebabs. Melted in your mouth!
We were worried about visiting in February – not really sure what the weather would be like, but it was perfect. I’d definitely come again during this time of the year. Yesterday it rained in the morning, but it was only drizzle and it didn’t affect us at all. The rest of the time the sun was out and we were comfortable in a jacket.
Ultimately we had a great time here. The people are friendly, the streets are very picturesque, and the history is just something neither of us have seen before. It was short, but sweet.
