Am I going to be stuck, foodless, in a hotel room for two days?

March 6, 2012 5:06 PM

I am going to a conference in Aarhus, Denmark, and booked to arrive a couple of extra days early, so I could do some sightseeing in Copenhagen. THEN I realised that I'll be arriving on Easter Sunday. So I'm doomed, right?

I know Denmark has even more restrictive opening hours than many countries, and I used to live in Aarhus, so I know everything is closed there for Easter and Easter Monday (including most restaurants). I haven't really been to Copenhagen before, though, so my question is whether that is maybe a little different? Is it possible that some Copenhagen tourist attractions and restaurants will be open on Easter Monday at least, if not Sunday?

If not, can anyone suggest anything worth doing in that part of Denmark, or anywhere between Copenhagen and Aarhus that doesn't require things to be open? I'll be just coming off a 26-hour flight, so probably not up for a long hike in the forest, but are there easy walks you might recommend, or something else like that? I speak relatively fluent Danish if that is relevant.

posted by lollusc to Travel & Transportation around Copenhagen, Denmark (1 answer total)

Best answer: I was there last year on Whit Sunday and think that most of the attractions were open, but we had a really hard time finding reasonable non-tourist trap food until we found a reasonably good grocery store open on Vesterbrogade. Most of Strøget's stores were closed.

Something that doesn't require things to be open to is rent a bike and ride it around. Lots of the hotels have their own bike fleet, so it shouldn't - hopefully - be too much of a challenge to track one down to ride around and sight-see.

As for what's open, the Danish Design Centre is open on holidays from 11am - 4pm, which includes both Easter Sunday and Monday. The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek is also open similar hours on both days and is kitty-corner from the Design Centre.

There's also some stuff outside of Copenhagen that is fairly easily accessible by the train. For instance, the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, north of Copenhagen on the metro, will be open on the Sunday from 11am-6pm, but apparently not the Monday. There's also the Fredericksburg Castle/National History Museum, which has not only cool exhibits about the royal family, but also nice grounds that could be wandered for awhile, is open every day.

In that cursory look, the only thing I found that seems to be closed on Easter weekend is Tivoli Garden, which doesn't open for the season until April 12. Sad, since it's really cool.

Mostly non-related, but looking up some of that info in my Scandinavia guidebook from last year resulted in the discovery of a forgotten 50 euro note. Fun!
posted by urbanlenny at 7:52 PM on March 6, 2012