Towards the end of 2024, a friend in the UK messaged me to let me know that Thomas Dambo was going to be running some behind-the-scenes studio tours of his workshop in Copenhagen, with one of them being in English.
He’s a Danish artist who’s built amazing troll sculptures all around the world (these are the ones we’ve found so far), so having a chance to meet him in person and see the new trolls that he’s working on was too good of an opportunity to miss.
The timing was perfect too. The tour was on Saturday March 15 and we were due to have moved to the UK a few days before that, so it would be easy to get there on a short flight. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out quite as planned due to delayed paperwork for our dog (more about that in a future post), but we still didn’t want to miss that opportunity.
Thankfully we were able to book flights from the US to Copenhagen using miles. Rather than just staying for a night or two, we booked four nights in Copenhagen to see a little more of the city. Here’s what we got up to while we were there.
How We Got To Copenhagen
Towards the end of 2024, I participated in the Frequent Miler Million Mile Madness challenge. At the time, SAS (Scandinavian Airlines) was running an incredible promotion where they’d award 1 million miles to everyone who flew on 15 different SkyTeam airlines. All three of us who participated in the challenge were successful and so we each ended up with 1 million SAS miles.
One of the sweet spots of the SAS EuroBonus program is the ability to book one way tickets in business class on SAS from the US to Europe for only 50,000 miles. We managed to find availability for the date we needed to fly there, so that worked out perfectly.
Our flight was from Newark to Copenhagen, so it was only due to take ~7.5 hours. Based on when the dinner service was finished and breakfast started the next morning, that only gave us a few hours to get some sleep. I think Shae might’ve gotten a little more than I did, but we both only ended up sleeping for 1.5-3 hours. That meant jetlag hit us pretty hard on the Copenhagen end.
Where We Stayed In Copenhagen
Villa Copenhagen
We spent four nights in Copenhagen, the first three of which were at Villa Copenhagen. We picked that property because it was bookable through American Express Fine Hotels + Resorts (FHR).
Both Shae and I have Amex Platinum cards that have a $200 FHR credit each year. We’d booked two of our nights at the end of last year to use up our 2024 credits, then used one of our 2025 credits for the third night there.
In addition to those credits, FHR bookings offer complimentary breakfast for two, guaranteed 4pm late checkout, a $100 food & beverage credit and 12pm early check-in where available.
We were able to take advantage of all those benefits. One of the ones that we most appreciated was the early check-in. We arrived at the hotel at about 8:30am, so much earlier than we’d expect to be able to get access to our room. That was indeed the case, but they were able to keep hold of our bags while we went out and explored the area.
Our room ended up being ready by 12:30pm, so we headed up there and promptly fell asleep for many, many hours!
Another FHR benefit is a room upgrade where available. We were apparently given an upgrade to a slightly larger room, but even then it was pretty small.
Still, it was comfortable enough and the breakfast each morning had a good selection of items. Breakfast was available until fairly late in the morning, so after filling up there we were generally pretty good until it was time for dinner each evening.
I published a more comprehensive review of our stay at Villa Copenhagen over on Frequent Miler, so you can find that review here.
Clarion Hotel Copenhagen Airport
After getting a late checkout at Villa Copenhagen, we took an Uber to our hotel for the final night – Clarion Hotel Copenhagen Airport. We booked this hotel for 15,000 Choice Privileges points and picked it because a) it’s connected to the airport via an enclosed walkway and so it would be easy to get from the hotel to the terminal and b) upgraded room types were bookable for the same number of points as a standard room.
I really enjoyed our stay at this property. Our room was spacious, warm and inviting, while the blackout curtains worked really well to help us get a great night’s sleep before our flights the next day.
In addition to the king bed, there was a sleeper sofa (so two other people could stay in the room if you need), along with a desk to work at. The bathroom was a decent enough size with both a bathtub and a walk-in shower. The bathtub had complimentary bath salts in case you want to have a relaxing soak (which I think Shae did make use of).
If you have a very early flight out of Copenhagen airport but still want breakfast, this could be the hotel for you. That’s because they start breakfast at 4:30am where they serve cold items, coffee and juices, then a full breakfast is available from 5:30am until 10am-10:30am depending on the day. The full breakfast had a great selection of items, so there’s something for everyone’s tastes.
Once again, I wrote a more comprehensive review of our stay over on Frequent Miler, so check out my full review of the Clarion Hotel Copenhagen Airport here.
What We Did In Copenhagen
Thomas Dambo Studio Tour
Our primary reason for being in Copenhagen was the behind-the-scenes tour of Thomas Dambo’s studio where he and his team design and create trolls.
It was an amazing experience that I wrote more about here. Getting to meet him in person was awesome, as was getting to see his next collection of trolls. That’s going to be a traveling collection that’ll start off in the UK where we now live, so we’re looking forward to seeing the trolls again in the wild.
In the meantime, here’s a quick glimpse of some of them.
More Thomas Dambo Trolls!
Back in 2019 on an entirely different Frequent Miler challenge, I paid a quick visit to Copenhagen to find one of Thomas Dambo’s troll collections – the 6 Forgotten Giants (see more about them here).
Our friend Ros who’d given us a heads up about the studio tour had flown from the UK to Copenhagen herself to also go on the tour. We therefore went there with her, then the three of us went around to find the 6 Forgotten Giants as neither Shae nor Ros had seen them before.
We also stopped off at Roskilde earlier that day to find Runde Rie – another of Thomas Dambo’s trolls, but one which none of us had seen before.
Freetown Christiania
After arriving in Copenhagen early in the morning, and while we waited for our room at Villa Copenhagen to be ready, Shae and I went to explore Copenhagen a little.
Our first stop was Freetown Christiania, a somewhat hippy community on the eastern side of Copenhagen. It’s a unique place that isn’t the prettiest part of the city…
…but it does have some great artwork.
Our main reason for stopping by there though was – yep, you guessed it – there’s another Thomas Dambo troll to see! Green George was Thomas Dambo’s 50th creation and there are now more than triple that number of trolls worldwide.
Copenhagen Wanderings
In addition to our jetlag that persisted throughout our stay, Shae and I were exhausted from trying to sort through all of our stuff before moving to the UK. We therefore spent more time napping than anticipated, but we did also spend quite a bit of time wandering around Copenhagen.
We didn’t make it out to Nyhavn (the cute area on the water with the colorful houses that’s the quintessential image of Copenhagen), nor did we get to the Little Mermaid statue as both were a particularly long walk from our hotel. Tivoli Gardens was right next to Villa Copenhagen, but it was closed for the season when we visited – it was due to reopen a week or two after we left. We’re therefore planning on returning to Copenhagen to see all those, as well as to hopefully take a road trip a little further afield to find even more of Thomas Dambo’s trolls around Denmark.
Shae and I also spent some time wandering along Strøget – a pedestrian-only shopping street that had all kinds of fun shops.
Something interesting that Shae spotted was that street lights in downtown Copenhagen (and possibly further afield in Denmark) weren’t on light poles like in many other countries. Instead, they were hanging above the middle of the road. We’re not sure of the reasoning behind that, but it seemed like a good idea for many reasons:
- It means the sidewalks are clear and so you won’t walk into light poles
- The lights still provide good lighting for both sides
- It halves the number of lights needed as there’s only one set down the middle rather than on both sides
- There are fewer resources needed as all the metal for the poles aren’t needed
- Light pollution is presumably reduced due to fewer lights
- It’s more energy efficient as there are half the number of lights
Where We Ate & Drank In Copenhagen
Espresso House
While we were killing time waiting for our room at Villa Copenhagen to be ready, we stopped at a café for a drink and a snack. Called Espresso House, the decor inside was very nice and the server was friendly.
Shae got a regular hot chocolate and a croissant, while I ordered a caramel hot chocolate and blueberry crumble cake. We were pleased about getting to experience a small, local coffee shop, only to discover later in our visit after seeing them all around the city that Espresso House is a large chain in Scandinavia with 500+ locations! Oh well, it was very nice regardless, so I can see why it’s successful.
Grocery Store Snacks
Our jetlag hit us pretty hard, so we ended up getting almost a full night’s sleep (albeit during the day!) once our room at Villa Copenhagen was ready. We were a little peckish when we woke up, so we wandered over to a nearby Netto grocery/convenience store to grab some snacks for dinner.
We spent 429 DKK which is ~$65, but that included a bottle of whiskey, two bottles of wine, 8 sodas and lots of snacks. Considering that was a convenience store in the center of a European capital city, that felt very reasonably priced.
Wagamama
Wagamama is an Asian food chain that we loved back when we used to live in the UK. There was one a block from us in Copenhagen, so we went there for dinner our second night despite it not being Danish cuisine.
Courtyard Bar at Villa Copenhagen
Our stay at Villa Copenhagen included a $100 food and beverage credit courtesy of booking through Amex Fine Hotels + Resorts. To use that up, we had dinner on our final night of our stay there. That was after the Thomas Dambo studio tour, so Ros joined us too to help us use up the credits.
It ended up being a bit of a disappointing meal. We were extremely hungry by that point as it had been a long day looking for trolls. The service was super-slow and inattentive, despite it not being busy. Then Shae’s burger arrived cold, so it wasn’t great. Perhaps the restaurant/bar is good at other times and we just got unlucky, but when we return to Copenhagen we wouldn’t bother eating there again.
McDonald’s
Don’t judge us for eating McDonald’s in a foreign country! This was actually a deliberate choice as we like trying McDonald’s in different countries because they always have a handful of different menu items compared to what’s available in the US.
Denmark was no exception. I ordered a Spicy Mixed Team Box which includes hot wings, spicy nuggets and chili cheese tops.
I don’t like cheese and hadn’t realized that’s what the balls were. Thankfully Shae suspected it before I bit into one, so she saved me from those.
One of my favorite desserts is banoffee pie, something sadly lacking from dessert options in the US. The McDonald’s we visited in Copenhagen had a banoffee milkshake, so there was no way I was missing out on that.
I probably could have though. It didn’t taste gross or anything, it just wasn’t quite the banoffee experience that I’d been envisioning.
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