A Day Trip to Lund & Malmö, Sweden.

On bank holiday Monday, which was our last day in Scandinavia, my brother and I had a lazy morning then headed across the Øresund Sound from Copenhagen to Sweden for a daytrip. Did you know you could visit Sweden on a day trip from Copenhagen? I had no idea until I looked at the map and realised just how close they are!

So, ready to find out how to visit Sweden on a day trip from Copenhagen? Let’s go!

The trip from Copenhagen to Sweden was really quick and easy; we booked tickets a couple of months ago from the SJ website (it’s much cheaper than the Rail Europe site), picked them up at Kobenhavn (Copenhagen) Station, and off we went on the train! Less than an hour later we arrived in Lund, a gorgeous little University town in Sweden just outside Malmö .

First Stop: Lund, Sweden

Full of old buildings and plenty of history, Lund is also famous for it’s Gothic Cathedral. We tiptoed quietly in to take a peek, but there was a mass on, so we tiptoed back out and took some pics outside.

 

Dining Out in Lund

We then went on a little shopping trip, there was an H&M and then a few other shops there, and then went searching for lunch. After wandering into the Saluhallen, which is an indoor food market, and taking a look around there, we decided to look elsewhere.

The Saluhallen is modern and has a quite a few food shops and cafes inside, but it’s all pretty expensive. We eventually came across a lovely little restaurant on the square called La Piazza. It offered a mixture of traditional Swedish fare, with Italian and French options too.

My brother had a traditional Swedish Smörgåsbord, which is an open sandwich, and said it was the best sandwich he’s ever had. I meanwhile, went for the Italian option and had a carbonara (god I’m experimental!), which to be frank, was the best carbonara that’s ever had the opportunity to grace my mouth.

I am a huge carbonara fan, and this one was just scrumptious. Freshly cooked pasta, with huge slices of cheese and thick pieces of bacon…and the best part? I cut into it for an egg yolk to run all over the pasta. Perfetco! Absolutely delicious. I’d quite happily go to Lund again just for the pasta!

While in Lund we learnt that Swedish students are just like British ones…they love to dress up.

 

 

 

Second Stop: Malmö, Sweden.

We were in Lund for around 3 hours, and we felt it was enough time to see everything. It’s a very small town, and we saw pretty much all of it apart from the Botanical Gardens. We then headed to the station and caught the train to Malmö, which only took around 10 minutes. I wasn’t so impressed with Malmö . It’s quite a dirty city, and there isn’t much to do there. It’s also quite spread out, so to get to everything you need to use public transport, which we didn’t have the time for.

 

Malmö City Hall

 

 

We did some more shopping, I treated myself to a new face toner, and then we walked to the chocolate factory. It turns out the factory only does tours at certain times of the day, so after the half hour walk there and then finding out we’d missed the last tour, we treated ourselves to some chocolate and decided to go and visit the Castle, so off we went. I would definitely recommend researching the tour times before you plan your day trip!!

 

20 minutes later we finally got to Kings Park, which was really beautiful.

 

 

 

After crossing the city’s park we finally got to Malmö Castle, to realize that it was now 6pm and it was closed. It was a funny looking castle, my brother called it “the world’s shittest castle”. I felt a bit sorry for it, so responded with, “I think Guildford castle is worse” (it is).

 

 

 

This is Malmö’s famous tower. It’s alright. Nothing special. Not as amazing as the ones we saw in Hong Kong and Singapore. I guess for the Swedes it’s a big deal because they don’t have many skyscrapers there.

 

Can you tell I wasn’t very impressed with Malmö? It was a bit of a let down, although this was mostly because we hadn’t done our research to see what time attractions were open etc. So with the two key attractions closed, there just wasn’t much to do, and it wasn’t my type of city at all. We jumped on the train and headed back to Copenhagen as the sun was setting over the sound. I tried to get a photo, but the train was going too fast so I failed miserably…

On the journey back to Copenhagen we discussed our weekend brother/sister bonding trip and what we thought of Denmark and Sweden. I really enjoyed Denmark, Copenhagen is a lovely city and definitely worth visiting, however I feel as though I’ve done it and have no burning desire to return.

It’s the type of place that you visit once and tick it off the list, unless you’re really into the art/design scene…which I’m not. Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed the weekend and am really glad we went, but I just wouldn’t go back. I’m not a huge city girl anyway, I feel far more at home and at peace in ‘scenic’ places like the Greek Islands, or road-tripping ’round America.

Sweden was a let down, but I think it’s the type of country where you either need to go to Stockholm, or go right into the country and really experience the countryside. In future I think I really want to visit Norway or Finland and stay in the country – the mountains and lakes look absolutely breathtaking!

We got back to Copenhagen and said goodbye to the places near our hotel, and had one last frozen milkshake from 7-Eleven (we then had to explain to Dad why we had spent 20euros out of our ’emergency’ euros, on milkshakes at 8:30pm).

Just a quick note before I go, the hotel we stayed in was pretty awesome. I don’t usually do hotel reviews as I think they’re very much a personal choice, the only one I did before was my dire one of the Palazzo in Las Vegas. But the hotel we stayed at in Copenhagen deserves a special mention as it was a really fantastic find.
Naturally Copenhagen is really expensive, but the Clarion Collection Mayfair was pretty cheap (around £450 for 3 nights – cheap for central Copenhagen), and that price included breakfast every morning and a buffet dinner every night.
Source
The hotel was light, modern, trendy, and a little bit funky, and had a really great living room with cake in the afternoons. The staff were amazing, they booked our taxi for us and couldn’t do enough for us. The room and bathroom were small, but comfortable, clean, and modern, and it had a tv with heaps of movie channels.
We saved a lot of money by not having to pay for breakfast and dinner, but the only thing I disliked was that they wouldn’t serve tap water at dinner, they forced you to buy a bottle.
Anyway, if you’re looking for a hotel, I can’t recommend them enough. The location was also perfect, right next door to the main train station and Tivoli Gardens, and close to Frederiksberg and Nyhavn. If you’re into that sort of thing, it also has Copenhagen’s best strip club right opposite (no joke).
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Catherine Lux
Catherine Lux

Catherine Lux is a veteran travel blogger by night and the Head of Content Marketing at Amazon by day. Originally from Surrey, she spent four years living in Australia (2007-2009, and 2016-2018), and now lives in London. An ex-party girl sometimes prone to relapses, she loves nothing more than sharing her fine dining and luxury travel experiences with her loyal readers.

Find me on: Web | Instagram

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3 Comments

  1. Unknown
    March 11, 2015 / 6:43 pm

    You seriously disliked Malmo that much?! I've been there a fair few times and I love the place! I think it's such a unique and vibrant place with a really interesting mix of old and modern. There's some amazing food to experience, great festival in the summer and really interesting things like the library, cemetery and beautiful streets. I'll admit some of Malmo seems a bit 'rough' if you like, but I think that's the whole charm of it, it's not as stuck up it's own ass like Stockholm is. I personally love the place, it's a shame you didn't enjoy it.

    • Catherine Lux
      March 11, 2015 / 8:16 pm

      Yehh 🙁 I was really sad I disliked it so much, I just didn't get 'that' feeling from it. I think the main issue was we only had about three hours there and had no idea where to go as it was a bit of an impromptu side-trip from Copenhagen. I found it very sprawled and spread out and hard to find things to do when we had such little time available. Like I said though, I'm just not a massive city person.

  2. Lena
    March 2, 2016 / 9:30 pm

    Oh, I absolutely love Lund. When you live there as a student, it's a completely different feeling

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