People book hotels for many reasons. I picked the Copenhagen Marriott hotel for our family vacation because of its location on the Copenhagen Harbor canal (Kalvebod Brygge) and because I saw pictures of people wearing bathrobes from the hotel to go for a swim. And when we convinced our teenage sons to go on a trip to Copenhagen last summer, swimming in the canal felt like something they might remember and it became the only thing I wanted to do this trip. We’ve spent most of their lives traveling as a family but as we near the end of high school traveling with teenagers, I realize that our trips take up precious time for them too: from their friends, jobs, sports and lives. So we planned a shorter trip this summer that took us from Seattle to Copenhagen to Oslo (we took a ferry and that was really cool) and back through Sweden via trains and our whole trip including flights took 8 nights (thanks to direct flights from Seattle to Copenhagen on SAS) And I was determined that swimming in the canal would be part of this trip.
We had to book two rooms at the Marriott Copenhagen for our family of two teenagers and two adults
As a family of four (including twins) we’re finding lately that many rooms in Europe and Asia only let us book 3 people in a room if they don’t have family rooms available (and we book last minute so family rooms are often booked up). I also didn’t realize Ironman was happening in Copenhagen while we were there so a lot of rooms were booked up too. I used points to book our rooms and because of my Marriott Status with my Marriott Bonvoy card we were able to use the hotel lounge. This was awesome because our plane arrived early and we had time before check in and were given access to the lounge while we waited. The lounge at this hotel was peaceful and lovely too and it helped make for a great first night stay. Because we were taking a ferry to Norway the next day, we also utilized the late checkout that I get with the Platinum Status I get with my credit card and that was really helpful too. It’s definitely why I picked the Marriott Copenhagen over other hotels for our first nights’ stay in Copenhagen.
We walked and biked (we rented bikes ) from our hotel and really enjoyed the Copenhagen Contemporary Art Museum (they had an exhibit called Soft Robots) and the Reffen Food Hall nearby. We walked up the Round Tower. We spent one evening at Tivoli Garden.
And what about the swimming in the canal in front of the Copenhagen Marriott?
After all my talk of going to swim all over Scandinavia on our August trip, there are two reasons why we only ended up with a very short dip in the water when we went but I was really glad that this dream ultimately came true. The first reason was that the day we arrived we were told we couldn’t swim because this was the last day of a 3 or 5 day “ban” on swimming in the area because of elevated bacteria levels a few days before. And the other was because it was unusually cold in the area when we visited. I ended up buying a sweater!
PS. if you are looking for more places to swim in Copenhagen here is a list I found from BBC.
Also, we went to Copenhagen when the kids were very small and we all loved it back then so it was nice to bring them back as teenagers when they could actually bike ride and hang out more with us too.
Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys. She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live. She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)