Copenhagen - Is it expensive?

[Disapointednelly]

Hi all, I'm looking to book a long weekend in Copenhagen for my birthday in April but there's a lot of online discussion about how expensive it is...

Flights and hotel would be around £300 per person for Fri-Mon (getting full days on both). But when you're actually there do you end up spending a lot of money?

We have a recent obsession with Vikings so would love to do museums and travel to some smaller towns outside CPH

Has anyone been recently and can talk about costs? With how expensive everything is in the UK (and I'm up North!) I'm wondering if it won't feel like such of a hit when comparing.

Copenhagen is great. Yes, expensive, but you just choose your budget accordingly. e.g. beer not cocktails, bread not beluga. Some fantastically weird foods to be tried. Wear warm clothes and join the outside cafe society.

I've been a few times and overall I would say not much more expensive than a trip to London, other than coffee and a pastry which ends up super expensive!

very expensive.

I know a family member who went and it was super expensive. Think they said they were spending about £30 a time on lunches for 2, just a coffee and a sandwich type lunch.

Oh wow 😮I suppose since it's a birthday trip I can look past some of the costs. Maybe if we buy our own supplies for lunch it would make it cheaper...

Forgot to mention that breakfast will be included with the hotel so maybe we could sneak out some extra bits of food 😅

It is more expensive than London but you can cut costs by having a big breakfast in your hotel then buying picnic lunches and drinks from supermarkets rather than sit down meals, and just budget for evening meals out.
You should be able to find out prices for museums before you go so factor that in to your budget

It is quite expensive but not that much more than London these days. Except for alcohol, alcohol is quite expensive. Just a thougth though, have you considered Stockholm instead? It's much bigger, they have an excellent Viking museum and there is the island Birka which is basically a museum on its own with viking settlements: https://www.birkavikingastaden.se/en/about-birka/. It's not any cheaper than Copenhagen but there is more to do and the archipelago is beautiful.

It is expensive but you can mitigate. We upgraded our hotel room for £60 and got access to a lounge with free food and drinks, which covered us for evening meals. Also bought the Copenhagen Card, which covers all public transport and entrance into most of the tourist places (Tivoli gardens etc). There's tons of nice sandwich and cake shops which aren't really expensive.

We work hard and save enough to enjoy holidays but have a budget and i came back with money in Copenhagen!

I didn’t find it as expensive as people have said. Yeah sure it’s a city in a more expensive country and yes some alcoholic drinks are expensive but drink beer instead. Prosecco was served in larger measures so only needed one instead of two. We enjoy a couple of drinks on holiday but don’t drink loads. I feel cities in the U.k. aren’t much different these days alcohol can tot up.

We tend to eat a large breakfast and evening meal or snacky breakfast eg croissants and a lunch instead. We didn’t go to mega expensive places to eat that’s not us. Basically not three larger meals. We buy snacks for the room.

Gasoline grill made amazing burgers.

We got the copenhagen city card for sight seeing.

£30 for lunch for two with a drink isn’t that bad to sit in a cafe/bar/restaurant and service?

Thank you! I will have a look into Sweden as that's also on my bucket list to travel to. 😁

As for alcohol, we're not huge drinkers and when we do see the prices I'm sure we'd be happy to stick to soft drinks

It is expensive yes, but about on par with central Paris, and maybe a little more than London. The Copenhagen Card covers a lot of attractions and the metro lines are clean and efficient.

@Musiclover234 thank you for this! Since it is April we have plenty of time to save up so this is reassuring to hear.

Thanks for all your recommendations - particularly the Copenhagen card as it covers pretty much all of the attractions we have on our list!

Another question I have - is it as rainy as online says? 😅

I didn't find it much more expensive than London to be honest.

Have a look at the Copenhagen card, (you can buy on line) it gets you into all the attractions you'll probably want to go to and museums in towns round it like the Viking museum and Cathedral in Roskilde and the castles near by. I think it's a bargain as it gets you all travel too. From memory it's 100Euros for 2 days.

If you get there late don't activate it till the next morning so you get your full 48 hours and just pay the £5 or whatever it is from the airport on the train.

The boat trip included in the Copenhagen card is very good.

I went in June with my son.

If you like a drink, I think it was quite expensive. But we don't really drink much so happy with one drink with dinner.
We got the Copenhagen card which was very cost effective and we ended up doing more than we planned because it was covered by the card.
I thought food was expensive but the quality of even street food was very high so it felt like good value.
Tivoli gardens has a food hall attached which is more like fast food but very good quality.
We did have a bigger breakfast than normal and took some pastries and fruit for either lunch or a snack when we got back in the evening. Our habit is then to buy one meal out, either dinner or a later lunch. But we do this for city breaks here anyway.
We didn't do much shopping apart from a few tins of biscuits which we got from a supermarket for half the price they were in tourist shops.
We had a great time and will go again.
I'd recommend the canal boat trip and Tivoli.
We had a day out to Roskilde where there is the Viking boat museum and Cathedral where all the Danish kings and Queens are buried.

@Disapointednelly

I would take a cardi and waterproof just in case.
It wasn't as warm as I expected in June but then I don't really want blazing hot when traipsing around cities.
It drizzled a bit on one day, and the last day was quite chilly but we were at the Aquarium so didn't matter

It’s cheaper than London / Birmingham / Manchester lol.

Alcohol is very expensive.

There are plenty of supermarkets so we ate out for lunch and got picnic style meals for back at the hotel in the evening.

Lots to do.

We didn't find it super expensive.

Thank you! Yes, I'm not one for hot weather so I'll welcome a cooler climate for a holiday 😂
I usually get grumpy in the rain in the UK but I think if I'm on holiday I can put up with it

I live in central London and have been to Copenhagen many times. Yes it is expensive, but not much more than London. If you're from a cheaper part of the UK you'll notice the difference. But if you're planning for April you have time to save, and when there you can do it on a budget if needed. Take advantage of your hotel breakfast!

For Vikings, I recommend a trip to Roskilde. It's around 20 minutes on a train, costs around £12 return train ticket. I hear Trelleborg is also great but I haven't been.
A lot of museums are closed on Mondays so plan around that.

I love Copenhagen, it's such a fab place to visit!

I think if you are from the UK the rain won't be an issue. It rains on average for 16 days and 43mm in London in April and that's one of the drier parts of the UK. In Stockholm it's 11 days and 30mm, Copenhagen 15 days and 30mm.

We just got back from Copenhagen at the weekend. We were lucky with the weather, some days were so sunny and warm (not so much in the shade tho) that we didn't need coats or jackets at all. We stayed in an airbnb (2 adults but could accommodate up to 2 adults and 2 children. Or 4 people), we were just a few minutes walk from the main town/Chritiania but there were also a plentiful supply of buses and metro. A lot of very well situated bus stops.

Yes, it can be expensive, but we definitely did indulge ourselves a few times. It's not prohibitively expensive in my opinion, but of course there are many expensive restaurants/attractions, esp in the more touristy areas, but you see so much more of the city if you do wander out of the touristy bits. I think our airbnb was much less than £1k for 7 nights, but there are a lot more expensive places than we booked, as is usual in most places. Shops (for food etc) weren't particularly expensive either, plenty of 7/11s etc.

I'm quite happy to dm you with the listing if you think it might sound suitable.

Oh and out of week there, last week there was only a couple of days that were rainy iirc. But I've no idea if that was typical or we were lucky, but to point out that weather reports that I looked at when we got back showed a few lovely sunny days again this week.
It really can be done relatively cheaply, and plenty of free things to do. We mostly use airbnbs for any trip more than a couple of days long as it suits us far better for doing our own food etc on the days we chose to.

Stay in Malmo and get the train across

I spent a week there earlier this year and didn't think it was as expensive as the UK. I live on the outskirts of London so appreciate that the bit of the UK I'm in is expensive. It is not a place for a bargain bucket trip, but not scary costs either. We stayed in a really lovely Airbnb right in the centre and it was much cheaper than the nearby hotels.

You can walk everywhere and there is loads to do. Loved it and would recommend a visit.