Denmark: Copenhagen, Aarhus and Skagen

1. Jour 1 : Arrive in Copenhagen

   Copenhagen Airport to your hotel in central Copenhagen

   • Welcome dinner
   • Nuit : Copenhagen
   Détail du jour 1

   Fly into Copenhagen Airport at Kastrup, about 10 km from the centre. A driver meets you in the arrivals hall and takes you to your hotel, so there is no need to work out tickets on the first afternoon. If you land early, drop your bags and walk: Nyhavn's painted townhouses and the old harbour are a short stroll from most central hotels, and Tivoli Gardens opens into the evening in summer. At about 6 pm your See Sight Tours guide meets the group for a briefing on the week: how the bike morning works, what to wear at Grenen, and how the bags travel on the day we go to Aarhus. Then we walk out together along the Lakes, the chain of long reservoirs on the west side of the old city, where the neon signs above Sortedam Lake include the Irma hen, Denmark's oldest neon sign. Dinner is a welcome meal together in a neighbourhood restaurant nearby.

   Compris

   • Pick-up at Copenhagen Airport (CPH)
   • Welcome briefing with your guide
   • Evening walk along the Lakes
   • Welcome dinner

   Activités en option

   • Tivoli Gardens, at your own cost, if you arrive early

   Temps libre : Free until the 6 pm briefing

   Activité : Plan to land by about 3 pm to make the briefing; later arrivals are met and join the group at dinner.

   

2. Jour 2 : Copenhagen by bike

   A morning ride around central Copenhagen, then a free afternoon

   • Petit-déjeuner et repas du midi
   • Nuit : Copenhagen
   Détail du jour 2

   Copenhagen is flat and built for bikes, and the best way to see it is the way Danes get to work. After breakfast we collect bikes and helmets and ride with your guide at an easy pace on the city's separate cycle lanes, about 12 km in three hours with plenty of stops. We cross to Slotsholmen, past Christiansborg, the seat of parliament, and Børsen, the 17th-century stock exchange whose dragon-tail spire was lost in the April 2024 fire and is being rebuilt. Over the harbour bridges we ride into Christianshavn's canals, stop at the edge of Freetown Christiania, then follow the waterfront north past the Opera House view, Nyhavn and Amalienborg to the star-shaped ramparts of Kastellet. Lunch is smørrebrød, the open rye sandwiches Copenhagen does best, at a sit-down table. The afternoon is yours: the National Museum, the Glyptotek, a harbour swim at one of the bathing spots, or Tivoli in the evening.

   Compris

   • Guided bike ride with your guide: Slotsholmen, Christiansborg and Børsen, Christianshavn, Christiania, Nyhavn, Amalienborg and Kastellet
   • Bike and helmet hire
   • Smørrebrød lunch

   Activités en option

   • Tivoli Gardens
   • The Church of Our Saviour spire climb
   • The National Museum or the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek

   Option plus facile : Ride an e-bike, or skip the ride and meet the group for lunch after a morning at the Glyptotek.

   Option plus active : In the afternoon, climb the Church of Our Saviour's spire, about 400 steps, the last stretch on an open staircase wound around the outside (closed in bad weather).

   Temps libre : Afternoon and evening free

   Activité : About 12 km on flat, separated cycle lanes. You need to be comfortable riding a bike in city traffic; your guide leads and a second rider closes the group.

   

3. Jour 3 : Kronborg and Louisiana

   Copenhagen by train to Helsingør, then Humlebæk, and back to Copenhagen

   • En train
   • Petit-déjeuner et repas du midi
   • Nuit : Copenhagen
   Détail du jour 3

   We take the coastal train north, about 45 minutes, to Helsingør, so we are at Kronborg when it opens. The castle guards the narrowest point of the Øresund, about 4 km from Sweden, and for centuries collected tolls from every ship that passed; it is the Elsinore of Hamlet and has been on the UNESCO list since 2000. Your guide takes you through the royal apartments, the great ballroom and down into the casemates, the dark vaults under the walls. Lunch is a sit-down meal in Helsingør's old town. Then it is ten minutes back down the line to Humlebæk and a short walk to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, opened in 1958 in a villa whose glass corridors run through a sculpture garden that drops to the water, with Sweden across the strait. Take the afternoon at your own pace with the collection and the lawns, then ride the train back to Copenhagen, about 35 minutes, for a free evening.

   Compris

   • Return train tickets from Copenhagen to Helsingør and Humlebæk
   • Kronborg Castle with your guide, including the casemates
   • Lunch in Helsingør
   • The Louisiana Museum of Modern Art and its sculpture garden

   Option plus facile : Return to Copenhagen straight after lunch, or sit in Louisiana's café and garden rather than walking the galleries.

   Option plus active : On a weekday, when Louisiana stays open into the evening, stay on for dinner at the museum and take a later train back.

   Temps libre : Evening free

   Activité : About 5 km of walking, with stairs and uneven floors at Kronborg. Louisiana closes on Mondays, so this day never falls on one.

4. Jour 4 : Roskilde's Viking ships, then Aarhus

   Copenhagen by train to Roskilde, then on across Funen to Aarhus

   • En train
   • Petit-déjeuner et repas du midi
   • Nuit : Aarhus
   Détail du jour 4

   Your bags leave in our vehicle this morning and meet you at the hotel in Aarhus, so you travel light. A 25-minute train takes us west to Roskilde for the opening of the Viking Ship Museum. Inside are five Viking ships that were filled with stones and sunk in Roskilde Fjord around 1070 to block an enemy, then raised in 1962 and pieced back together; the windows behind them look out on the same fjord. In the boatyard outside, shipwrights build full-size copies with Viking tools. We walk up through the town to Roskilde Cathedral, on the UNESCO list since 1995, the burial church of Danish kings and queens since the 15th century, with tombs from Gothic to modern. After a sit-down lunch in Roskilde we take the intercity train across Zealand, over the Great Belt Bridge and through Funen to Aarhus, about two and a half hours. The evening is free in Aarhus's Latin Quarter.

   Compris

   • Train from Copenhagen to Roskilde and on to Aarhus
   • Your luggage carried to Aarhus by our vehicle
   • The Viking Ship Museum with your guide
   • Roskilde Cathedral
   • Lunch in Roskilde

   Activités en option

   • A sailing on the fjord in a reconstructed Viking boat, in summer, when places are available

   Temps libre : Evening free in Aarhus

   Activité : About 4 km of walking in Roskilde, partly uphill from the harbour to the cathedral. The cathedral keeps shorter hours on Sundays and closes during services.

5. Jour 5 : Aarhus: Moesgaard and Den Gamle By

   Aarhus to Moesgaard Museum and back, then Den Gamle By

   • Environ 30 min de route
   • Petit-déjeuner et repas du midi
   • Nuit : Aarhus
   Détail du jour 5

   A short drive south of the city takes us to Moesgaard Museum for its opening. The building, finished in 2014, is cut into a hillside under a sloping grass roof that people walk up in summer. Inside, the prehistory of Denmark is told through the things people left behind, and the centre of it is the Grauballe Man, a body found in a peat bog in 1952 and about 2,300 years old, so well preserved that you can see his stubble and the lines of his fingertips. Your guide takes you through the Iron Age and Viking galleries, and lunch is in the museum. In the afternoon we are back in town at Den Gamle By, an open-air museum of Danish town life founded in 1914, with merchants' houses, workshops and a bakery moved from towns across the country, and newer streets set in the 1920s and the 1970s. Wander at your own pace; the evening is free.

   Compris

   • Moesgaard Museum with your guide, including the Grauballe Man
   • Lunch at Moesgaard
   • Den Gamle By open-air museum

   Option plus facile : Return to the hotel after lunch and visit Den Gamle By for an hour later in the afternoon, or not at all.

   Option plus active : Walk the forest path from Moesgaard down to the beach on Aarhus Bay before lunch, about 2 km each way.

   Temps libre : Late afternoon and evening free

   Activité : About 6 km of walking across the two museums, with slopes and stairs at Moesgaard.

6. Jour 6 : ARoS, Rubjerg Knude and the two seas at Grenen

   Aarhus to Lønstrup and Rubjerg Knude, then Skagen and Grenen

   • Environ 3 h de route
   • Petit-déjeuner, repas du midi et repas du soir
   • Nuit : Skagen
   Détail du jour 6

   We are at ARoS when it opens at 10 am. On the roof of the art museum, Olafur Eliasson's Your rainbow panorama is a circular walkway of coloured glass about 150 m around, and walking it before the crowds turns the city below red, then yellow, then blue. Inside, take in Ron Mueck's giant crouching Boy. Before noon we drive north, about two hours, to Lønstrup, a fishing village where the boats are pulled up on the beach, for a sit-down fish lunch. Just south, Rubjerg Knude lighthouse stands in a moving dune on a cliff above the North Sea; it was first lit in 1900 and moved about 70 m inland in 2019 to stay ahead of the eroding coast. Another hour takes us to Skagen. After check-in we go out to Grenen, Denmark's northern tip, ride the tractor-drawn Sandormen bus out over the sand, and stand where the waves of the Skagerrak and the Kattegat meet. Dinner is fish in Skagen.

   Compris

   • ARoS Aarhus Art Museum and Your rainbow panorama
   • Lunch in Lønstrup
   • Rubjerg Knude lighthouse and dune
   • Grenen with the Sandormen tractor bus
   • Dinner in Skagen

   Option plus facile : Stay by the van at Rubjerg Knude's car park and the short path, and ride the Sandormen both ways at Grenen.

   Option plus active : Walk out to the tip of Grenen and back along the beach, about 4 km on sand, instead of riding the Sandormen.

   Activité : About 3 hours of driving in two legs, broken by lunch and a walk. The path at Rubjerg Knude climbs a soft dune. Swimming at the tip of Grenen is forbidden because of the currents.

   

7. Jour 7 : The Skagen painters and home from Aalborg

   Skagen to Aalborg Airport

   • Environ 1.5 h de route
   • Petit-déjeuner
   Détail du jour 7

   From the 1870s, painters came to Skagen for the light and the fishing community, and the Skagens Museum holds what they made here: P.S. Krøyer's summer evenings on the beach, Anna and Michael Ancher's fishermen and kitchens, and the blue hour that Krøyer made famous. We are there when it opens, with time to walk through Skagen's yellow houses and red roofs afterwards. In the late morning we drive south, about an hour and a quarter, to Aalborg Airport, arriving around 1 pm. From there you can fly to Copenhagen to connect home, or we drop you at Aalborg station for a train to Copenhagen, about four and a half hours. Your guide checks your onward plans before saying goodbye. Book a flight from Aalborg leaving after about 2:30 pm.

   Compris

   • The Skagens Museum with your guide
   • Drop-off at Aalborg Airport (AAL) or Aalborg station

   Activités en option

   • Anna Ancher's house, next to the museum

   Option plus facile : Skip the museum and take a slow breakfast and a walk through the old town.

   Option plus active : An early walk back out to Grenen or along the beach before breakfast.

   Activité : Book a flight from Aalborg after about 2:30 pm, or a connection in Copenhagen with time to spare.

Faune et météo : May to September brings long days, with sunset after 10 pm in June in Skagen, and the summer opening hours that make the later visits possible. Expect showers and wind at any time; the North Jutland coast is cooler and windier than Copenhagen.

• Copenhagen3 nuits
• Aarhus2 nuits
• Skagen1 nuit