You could walk Copenhagen in a day. Nobody does.
Which canal boat carries a live guide and which just plays a recording. What three hours on a bike costs. Whether Kronborg is worth the train up the coast. Reviews of every tour you can book in Denmark.
The canal boat, the highlights walk, the bike tour, the brewery.
Four bookings that between them cover most of a first visit to Copenhagen. What each one costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The first hourCanal Cruise with GuideAn hour on the canals with a guide talking, past Nyhavn and the opera house. The quickest way to work out where everything is.
02The walk everyone booksCopenhagen Highlights Walking TourTwo hours through the old town and the palace square, on foot, with somebody who lives here doing the talking.
03The Copenhagen way3-Hour City Highlights Bike Tour with GuideThree hours on a bike, because the city was built for them. Flat ground, separated lanes, and a guide who knows the shortcuts.
04The brewery afternoonHome of Carlsberg Experience Entry TicketThe old Carlsberg gate, the dray horses still stabled behind it and the cellars underneath. Beer at the end.
Copenhagen splits into three walks: the highlights, the back streets and the slow one.
The old town is compact and flat, so the question was never whether to walk it. It is which two hours to give up. Three kinds of walk, where each one goes, and what it costs to join.
Copenhagen was built around its harbour and still shows off from there.
Nyhavn from below the quay, the opera house, the black glass of the library and the working boatyards nobody walks past. An hour on the water re-orders the whole map in your head.
More people in Copenhagen commute by bicycle than by car. Borrow one for an afternoon.
Flat ground, lanes separated from the traffic and lights timed for riders. Three hours on a bike covers ground a walking tour needs a whole day for, and you finish somewhere useful.
The canal boat wins, and it is not close.
Every tour in Denmark →The days out more travellers book than anything else in the country, with what each one costs.
1
Canal Cruise with Guide
See Copenhagen’s palaces, canals, bridges, and Little Mermaid on a lively one-hour cruise with an English-speaking guide.
From · $26
Read our review →
2
Hop-On Hop-Off Bus Tour with Boat Tour Option
from $35
3
Private Walking Grand Tour of Copenhagen
4
Lund and Malmö 2-Country Tour
from $141
5
Copenhagen Highlights Walking Tour
from $41
6
Highlights 3 Hour Bike Tour with a Local Guide
from $62
7
Hamlet and Sweden Tour – Two Countries in one day !
from $143
8
Grand Day Trip around Copenhagen
from $212
Hamlet’s castle is forty minutes up the coast, and the train goes every twenty.
Kronborg on the sound at Helsingør, Frederiksborg sitting in its own lake at Hillerød, the Viking ships pulled out of the fjord at Roskilde. Each is a day out of Copenhagen, and each is a great deal better with somebody explaining it.
Every castle day from Copenhagen →
What a day out in Copenhagen actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. Denmark is expensive to eat in and surprisingly cheap to look at.
Self-guided audio walks, museum entry, the hour on a canal boat and most of the guided highlights walks.
- 1Canal Cruise with Guidefrom $26
- 2Hop-On Hop-Off Bus Tour with Boat Tour Optionfrom $35
- 3Copenhagen Highlights Walking Tourfrom $41
Guided bike days, the segway hours, kayaks on the harbour and the food walks through Vesterbro.
Private guides, the three-castle day up the coast, and the trips that cross the bridge into Sweden.
A troll hunt, a Shakespeare castle, and a national talent for sitting still.
Old towns and harbour cruises exist everywhere. Ten-metre giants built from scrap pallets, a fortress Shakespeare set a play in without ever visiting, and a word for being warm indoors do not.
The Six Forgotten Giants
A Danish artist built six enormous figures out of scrap timber and hid them in the woods and scrub on the edge of Copenhagen, then published a set of riddles pointing at where they sit. They are free to visit and deliberately hard to find, which is the entire point. Going with a guide turns a day of wrong turnings into a day of finding them.
- 1Round-Trip to Møns Klint and Forest Tower★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 439 reviews
- 2Møns klint and The Forest tower – A day tour from Copenhagen★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 181 reviews
- 3The Forest Tower and Forgotten Giants-A day tour from Copenhagen★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 162 reviews
Kronborg, where Hamlet is set
The castle guards the narrowest point of the sound, close enough that Sweden looks like the far bank of a river, and for centuries Denmark charged every ship that passed. Shakespeare set his play here and never came. Underneath it, in the dark of the casemates, sits Holger the Dane, who is supposed to wake when the country needs him.
- 1Hamlet and Sweden Tour – Two Countries in one day !★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 2,223 reviews
- 2Kronborg, Frederiksborg Castle and Roskilde Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 1,763 reviews
- 3Rosenborg Castle Entry Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.6 · 381 reviews
Hygge, and what it actually means
It does not translate as cosiness, whatever the gift books say. It is closer to the deliberate act of making a dark afternoon bearable: lit candles at three, coffee that outlasts the conversation, nobody checking a phone. It became an export because the winters here are long, and a tour that explains it usually ends with cake.
- 1Hygge and Happiness Culture Walking Tour★★★★★★★★★★ 4.9 · 539 reviews
- 2Good Morning, Copenhagen: Feel The Danish Hygge & Happiness★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 503 reviews
- 3Copenhagen Walking Tour: Highlights and Hygge w/Lunch★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 272 reviews
Four Copenhagen bookings that will not wait for you.
Most of this city can be arranged the night before over a beer. These four run on seasons, small boats and closing times that take no interest in your plans.
- 01Kayak Tour in Copenhagen Harbor – June, July and AugustThe harbour kayaks only run through the warm months — the listings say so themselves — and summer slots go first.
- 021 or 2-Hour Canal Tour in Silent Electric BoatsThe silent electric boats take a handful of people at a time, so the long summer evenings are gone weeks ahead.
- 03The Forest Tower and Forgotten Giants-A day tour from CopenhagenThe giants are scattered around the edge of the city, so the hunts leave once and leave without you.
- 04Hamlet and Sweden Tour – Two Countries in one day !Kronborg is a museum with closing times, not a viewpoint. A late train up the coast buys you the outside of it.
Copenhagen gets about seven hours of daylight in December. Book around it.
From November the light is gone by four, and a two-thirty walking tour finishes in the dark. This is more or less why hygge exists. Go indoors, get warm, and put the money into the things that were never about daylight in the first place.
By kind of day — on foot, on wheels, on the water
Just reviewed, in Copenhagen and up the coast.
The rest of the new ones →
Understanding Klaksvík: A Self-guided city tour in KlaksvÍk
Read our review →
Castles of Kronborg and Frederiksborg from Copenhagen by Car
Read our review →
Private Transfer Copenhagen Airport CPH to Copenhagen by Sedan
Read our review →
Aarhus Self guided Mystery hunt Sabotage in Danish
Read our review →
Castles of Kronborg and Frederiksborg from Copenhagen by Car
Read our review →
Departure by Luxury Vehicule Copenhagen to Copenhagen airport CPH
Read our review →
