It is one of those waterfront spots. The Royal Danish Play House in Copenhagen is the newly inaugurated (2008) play scene of the Royal Danish Theatre and is located beautifully on the waterfront – just opposite the also fairly new opera.

Apart from the theatre itself, there is a restaurant and a café – both open for all.
If you want to dine somewhere out of the ordinary, I recommend the restaurant. Named after Ofelia, Hamlet’s lass, the restaurant is set in this huge, yet strangely intimate, industrial room with nothing but space, sky and the water. And white linen tablecloths. Definetely. The kitchen matches the unique setting with excellent offerings for brunch, lunch and dinner in seasonal menus.

The café is a café and serves good quality without being cosmic about it. Just very good with light meals, fine teas, quality beer and of course coffee to your heart’s content.

Outdoor serving season begins today, May 15th! Oh, and the rather competent cocktail bar moved outside as well. So you can sip manhattans and watch the Copenhagen skyline. Not too bad, really.

The place has free wireless internet (indoors – possibly reachable outside – didn’t check). I recommend the website with more details, i.e. wine, actual menues and so on.

By Morten Pors Nielsen from SpottedByLocals.com/copenhagen
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I have arrived in Copenhagen, the first stop of my fleeting journey over Scandinavia en route to Moscow.

I had booked myself into Danhostel for two nights. Unfortunately it turned out to be affiliated with Hostelling International. Nothing is free at His. The beds are cheap but you pay a lot for extras such as using the internet or eating their food. Even the bedding incurred an extra charge. Ho hum, I will be a bit choosier at my next destination.

The first night I hooked up from a friendly guy called Lester from California. As it was America’s Independence Day, it was decided that a few beers were in order in the hostel bar. The beers are not cheap, five pounds a pint of Christmas Special Tuborg. We then decamped to an Irish bar on the concourse of Copenhagen Railway Station to watch a baffling American Football game complete with guys wearing ridiculous amounts of padded armour. I have since rechristened this game Fat Man Pad Ball.

We were sharing a room with a couple who claimed to be from Rumania. Neither spoke English but the lad spoke fluent Spanish. They were asleep for at least 20 hours by the time they left this morning. We had a brief conversation with the lad before heading to the bar and he tried to blag money from us by way of a convoluted story of great misfortune at the hands of a conman in the Islamic Theme Park five minutes walk down the road..

They were both as thin as a rake and the lad’s entire head was shaking when he spoke to us. We strongly suspected they were Brazilian junkies which pretty much seemed to be confirmed when we overheard him talking to his girlfriend in Portuguese. Most odd.

I went out to have a look around Copenhagen this afternoon, my first impressions were it closely resembled Amsterdam (with less canals and sleaze) I followed the tourist map walking route, there was not a great deal to see but the architecture was nice and the general vibe around the city is chilled out. Every taxi is a Mercedes Benz and the streets are awash with people on bikes.

Considering so many people travel by bike, the city still seems choked with traffic and one of the biggest annoyances is waiting endlessly from the green man at every intersection.

The weather is very cold with a biting wind which seems to deep freeze you from the inside so an emergency trip to H&M was required for a warm hoody, a hat and a new scarf. Considering I had accidently withdrawn three times the amount of money I needed from the ATM, I thought I had better put it to good use. I am now the best dressed person in the hostel and rightly so.

Things are not cheap here, mostly London prices except beer which is extortionately expensive.

I am to be turfed out of Danhostel at 9am tomorrow morning so I am going to take a trip to Christiania (dope smoker’s socialist paradise, largely left to govern themselves by the government) and then catch the 13.15 train to Stockholm to stay on a canal boat for a night.

Photo “Boy and Girl” by wili_hybrid on Flickr