A weekend in Copenhagen on a normal budget

Copenhagen is expensive, but it is expensive in a specific way. Restaurants and taxis will empty your account; almost everything else is either cheap or free. Once you understand that split, a weekend there stops being intimidating.

Get a bike on the first morning. Not as an activity, as transport. The city is flat, the lanes are separated from traffic, and you will cover three times as much ground as you would walking. It also removes the temptation to take a taxi, which is where budgets go to die.

Breakfast is the meal to spend on. A proper bakery morning, cardamom bun and filter coffee, sets you up to eat lightly for the rest of the day. Lunch from a supermarket eaten by the water is not a compromise here; it is what half the city does when the sun is out.

Nyhavn is worth seeing once, early, before the terraces fill. The photograph everyone takes is genuinely good, and then you should leave. Ten minutes north there are canals just as pretty with a third of the people.

Spend the afternoon in Nørrebro or Vesterbro rather than the centre. That is where the shops are interesting, the coffee is better and the prices come down noticeably. Assistens Cemetery on a warm day is a park with headstones in it, and no one minds you treating it as one.

For dinner, book one place and keep it modest. Smørrebrød done well is more memorable than a tasting menu you paid four hundred kroner for out of obligation. Then finish with a swim if the weather allows: the harbour baths are clean, free and the most Copenhagen thing you can do.

Two days is enough to like the city. Three is enough to start pricing apartments, which is a different kind of problem.