Avebury, HMS Belfast and Glyndebourne show the diversity of English attractions

The plunging pound may be killing my holiday spending power, but it's drawing foreign tourists to British shores like bees to a spring orchard. We've seen more American guests this summer than the total for several previous years. Before each arrives, I ask them about sightseeing preferences. The variety of answers illustrates why England has such broad appeal.

Culture vultures are ecstatic at the density of museums, theatres and galleries. The history nerds head to castles, country houses and re-enactments. Americans are particularly keen on Downton Abbey and royals, and there's still a surprising amount of Diana-themed tourism. Fashionistas, foodies, landscape painters, hikers, surfers and music lovers can all easily craft itineraries focused on their specific interests.

A surge in my own sightseeing levels over the past fortnight drove this point home. Three destinations with three different companions. All radically different. All wonderful.

AVEBURY: For the new age spiritualist and the countryside lover
More than 1.5 million people flock to Stonehenge every year. It's one of those Top 10 "must sees" that a lot of foreign visitors feel they need to check off their list to claim that they've "done" England. Yes, it's impressive. And a much better experience these days thanks to the 2013 addition of museum and visitors' centre. But it's also one of the most expensive tourist attractions in England (£19 for an adult entry), packed with jostling hoards of bus tours, and you can only stand at a distance and gaze respectfully at the stones. Venture 24 miles further northwest and you'll be in the middle of the world's largest megalithic stone circle, without a group tour in sight. At Avebury you can actually touch the stones, see much more of the original monumental landscape and have a charming old-world village thrown in as a bonus.

And you don't even have to give up Stonehenge to visit. Though there's always talk of running the road through a tunnel, for now the A303 passes within a few hundred metres of the more famous henge, giving passengers a chance to have a good look from the roadside without paying for admission. (There's no stopping on this stretch of road, but there's inevitably traffic that slows things down.) The additional half hour's drive takes you through some striking landscapes. Dramatic, broad sweeps of Salisbury Plain's vast rolling fields alternate with small wooded valleys and charming villages with a tourist-pleasing percentage of thatch. You might even see a tank: besides being a picturesque landscape, the army uses much of it as a practice range. Look carefully as you pass through and you'll realise many hills and ditches are too regular in shape to be natural; Stonehenge was just one monument in a massive complex of henges, tombs and ceremonial sites that spread across this area between 4,000 and 5,000 years ago. (Roughly the same time as the great pyramids were built and people were making legends in Troy.)

Avebury has three stone circles: the gigantic outer one that's more than 1000 metres around and 347 across, once made up of almost 100 massive blocks, and two circles sitting side-by-side within. All of this was surrounded by a deep ditch with a high bank on the outer side, and a single ceremonial avenue cutting through it into the main circle. You can make out most of this today, though at least half the stones are gone and there's a village tucked into half the circle. The remaining stones stand like ancient, petrified giants, twisted by eons of weather into fantastic shapes. Touch them, stand beside them in communion, picnic in their shadow; there's no one to stop you here. In fact, there may well be more sheep in the fields in which you're standing than fellow tourists. The views from the top of the encircling mound are fantastic and the walk around the half of the circle standing in splendid isolation is one of the best in England. You can even bring your dogs.

The village itself sits in the other half of the circle, perhaps most distinctive for its handful of "New Age" shops. Avebury, even more than Stonehenge, is the emotional home of modern paganism and those who seek to connect with an earthy spirituality. If you're in to wicca, crystals, animism, Tarot or anything along those lines, the small shops here are a treasure trove. The less spiritually inclined can enjoy The Red Lion, the kind of thatched, traditional pub that's everyone's fantasy of ye olde England. Nearby Avebury Manor is one of the most unique houses in the National Trust's care. An exquisitely mellow 16th century stone pile on the outside, its interiors weren't significant so the NT offered it up for a posh reality show in 2011 where academics and designers re-created rooms in five different historic styles. Thus you can sit on chairs, touch stuff and have a play at being lord of the manor.

There's no charge to wander the stones, but you'll need to pay for the car park. It's £5.60 for admission to the small museum and £12.30 for the manor; all free for NT members.

HMS BELFAST: For the WWII and nautical history buff
She's been moored on the South side of the Thames, just upriver from Tower Bridge, since 1971 and draws about a quarter million visitors a year. The Royal Navy cruiser has been preserved much as she was when in service, and makes a fascinating counterpoint to anyone who's scrambled around HMS Victory in Portsmouth. Though the technology is vastly different and they're separated by 200 years, there are striking similarities in their layout and the way they functioned.

Belfast shares a name with the city where she was built, in the famous Harland and Wolff yards that also turned out the Titanic. She launched in 1938, just in time for the WWII North Sea service that made her famous, later transferring to Asia and playing a big role in the Korean War before being decommissioned in the 1960s. The way she spans eras of technology makes her particularly interesting. Some of her "bones" are charmingly old-school, like the wooden main deck, the ship's bell and the elegant patterned weave of the sick bay's blankets. But the red-and-white checkered lino flooring throughout is pure 1950s, and her navigation and weapons technology was incredibly advanced for the '60s. (If you're at all interested in the history of communications technology the areas on display here are particularly fascinating.)

This is a magnificent venue to expend the energy of restless children and a no-go area for the disabled, since seeing the ship properly demands scrambling up and down at least a score of ladders. The highlights for me were the two bridges in the front of the ship (one for the captain of the Belfast herself, and another on the deck below from which the admiral of the fleet could command accompanying ships) and the gun experience aft, where you can climb into a gun turret to get a sense

of what working there in battle would have been like thanks to a dramatic film using interviews with real sailors, and some simple but dramatic effects like gun smoke and a rumbling deck beneath your feet. I was shocked to learn that the men working the guns had no sight of the outside world. More than 20 of them were essentially packed into a dark, heaving metal box, taking aiming and firing instructions from elsewhere in the ship. It must have been horrifying.

The Belfast's location means she also benefits from some of the best views in London, which she makes the most of with a cafe up top and lots of places to stroll, linger and look. Wandering amongst bristling guns makes for an odd pleasure garden, but that's what her decks can be on a sunny day.

Admission is £18 at the door (less when purchased online in advance) or free for Imperial War Museum members. That includes an audio guide. Or you can just wander and benefit from informative displays throughout.

GLYNDEBOURNE: For the gardener and opera aficionado
You'll need connections or deep pockets to get into this one. (I, thankfully, have the former.) Tucked into the rolling chalk downs above the Sussex Coast, Glyndebourne is the mother of the whole English Country House opera tradition. Given our regular involvement with Longborough (most recently covered here) I was fascinated to take a peak into these sacred grounds on a members' open garden day.

The lovely manor at the centre of things looks venerable, but is actually a "Jacobethan" shell built around an older house and its additions early in the 20th century. The open day included access into "the organ room" where Glyndebourne's love affair with opera started. Its enormous windows, wood paneling and blue-and-white ceiling make it a treat to get inside.

Owner and music lover John Christie built this barrel-vaulted, 80-foot long room to house one of the largest organs in the country outside of a cathedral, then started hosting opera evenings here.  Originally amateur affairs with friends, he decided to get more sophisticated by hiring a professional troupe, then fell in love with and married the soprano. Eventually a purpose-built theatre sprang up next door to show off her talents. That original was replaced by a 1,200-seat, four-level, horseshoe-shaped auditorium in 1994 with state-of-the-art acoustics and all the backstage sophistication needed for what, by then, had become one of the country's leading opera companies. This space was open as well, allowing us to appreciate the light wood paneling in thin, vertical strips which is both dramatic and elegant and, I suspect, great for sound quality.

The real purpose of this day, however, was what lay outside. Glyndebourne is surrounded by glorious gardens that are now famous as a venue for posh pre-operatic picnicking. Given the age of the house, it's no surprise to find lush, romantic borders of mixed perennials in a style similar to contemporaries at Sissinghurst and Hidcote. There's an aromatic rose garden that spins around a fountain memorable for a bronze of one of the founder's pugs taking a nap. Broad lawns sweep down from the house to a ha ha, that marvelous English invention of a sunken wall and ditch that keeps sheep off the lawns, beyond which the woolly flock grazes in pastoral scenery. Elsewhere there's a long reflecting pool dotted with lilies and a productive bit of the grounds with greenhouses, orchards and vegetable beds maintained with Chelsea Flower Show-worthy precision.

There's plenty of modernity and innovation here as well. The grounds are dotted with sculpture, the most striking pieces made of rusted iron sheets of  geometric shapes that contrast beautifully with the greens and blues in which they're set. The most surprising bit of the garden is a bit wedged into a slope between the old, formal gardens and the opera house. Part jungle, part fernery, it has an enchanted "secret garden" feel about it that makes it feel like something very alien and exotic has been hidden in the landscape. A bit like the opera itself...

Glyndebourne isn't open to the general public but it's a great reminder of the stunning gardens found throughout Sussex. Check out Great Dixter, Hever Castle or Parham House for some gardens with equal appeal in the same area.

Tivoli: the "original" Disneyland keeps a charm long gone from Anaheim

My first holiday with the man who would become my husband included a trip to Disneyland. Back in the early days of our relationship and still keen to impress me, he managed to repress his cool disdain of the place. A year later he introduced me to Tivoli Gardens, and I started to uncover how he really felt. Disneyland, in his mind, is just an over-commercialised copy of Copenhagen's historic amusement grounds and would never match his childhood days at Tivoli.

Given my own idyllic Disney track record in both Anaheim and Orlando, I'm never going to concede
victory to his opinion. After years of visiting Tivoli, however, I've come to treasure the place's distinct magic and understand why Walt copied it. Yes, copied. A stroll around the grounds makes it quickly obvious that the original Anaheim park did not spring solely from Disney's imagination, but evolved from his visits to this Copenhagen original.

There are the themed areas sweeping you to another part of the world with relentless attention to architectural detail. A balance of high-quality shows with rides. Attractions for all ages. Gorgeous landscaping lining winding walks between attractions. The Pirateriet (pirate ship) is a dead ringer for the sailing ship Columbia that plies Disney's "Rivers of America" and the Roller Coaster is the Matterhorn in miniature.

The similarity is even stronger if you are old enough to remember Disneyland in the '70s, when entry to the park was a reasonable admissions fee, on top of which you bought tickets for each ride. Tivoli still works that way, and it makes me nostalgic for those old days in Anaheim. The difference is distinct. Tivoli is a pleasure garden, not an amusement park. People come here just to stroll, appreciate the gardens or eat at one of the restaurants. Like Disneyland, Tivoli is an oasis completely surrounded by urban mayhem; though it's so much smaller that you can spot the towers of central Copenhagen from almost everywhere inside. This doesn't diminish the sense of quiet relaxation that permeates, however. I remember the original Disneyland being much like this. Grown-ups would go to dine, relax and shop, handing us books of ride tickets to go amuse ourselves. It all seems much more sophisticated, and far friendlier for the visitor's wallet.

Adult entry is £16. You can add an unlimited ride pass for about £30 pounds, though pricing varies depending on weekends, weekdays, whether there's a big concert on, etc. But you can grab a single ride ticket for around £5. So if all you want to do is have a wander and go on a couple of rides, it's a steal compared to Disney's modern all-inclusive model.

This was my fourth visit but my first to try a ride. Which had to be the proto-Matterhorn (photo above). Built in 1914, this wooden coaster is one of the oldest still in operation in the world and thus has earned the right to its simple name: the Roller Coaster. (Perhaps with an emphasis on "the".) The Alpine setting around the boarding area and the model mountain above you are a dead ringer for Disney's adaptation, though you're in regular cars rather than bobsleigh and it's only about a third of the size of its Californian daughter. But size isn't everything. It's still gives a fine ride, with plenty of speed, incline and plunges. Some of the journey, like the Matterhorn, is in the darkened interior of the artificial mountain, adding to the suspense. But here you have the satisfying "clickity clack" of the wooden tracks, which lends a charm that modern rides can't match.

There are plenty of modern options here, too. The Demon is a triple loop-the-loop in a Chinese fantasy land, with the option of virtual reality headsets if you want to enhance your chills and spills. Fatamorgana is a 45-metre tower with spinning cars and discs hanging off it, the Star Flyer is an 80-metre high swinging carousel (based on the planetary discoveries of Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe) and Vertigo's spinning arms take you on a high-G plane ride. On some future visit I'm particularly keen to check out The Flying Trunk, which in design looks suspiciously like It's a Small World and in description (travel through 32 fairy tale scenes!) sounds like it spun off about half the attractions in Fantasy Land. If you splashed out for unlimited rides you could certainly get your money's worth, with 28 attractions ranging from the high-thrill stuff to innocent, child-friendly pursuits like an old-fashioned carousel or two-person boats on the lake.

Plenty of people just come here for the atmosphere, restaurants and entertainment, however. Locals get a particularly good deal on season tickets, from as little as £5 a month. We chatted with one couple in the gardens who come regularly for concerts (there's a large hall that hosts both classical and popular artists) and to appreciate the gardens. And their fantastical backdrops. The Nimb Hotel is a particularly famous centrepiece, looming above dancing fountains like Ali Baba's palace.

This low-bar entry fee also makes Tivoli a logical place to go out to eat, meaning that restaurants here tend to be higher quality and better value than their Disney counterparts. (Though, to be fair, Disney does have some great places to eat, which I've written about here.) We whiled away the afternoon at the Bryggeriet Apollo (the Apollo Microbrewery), a charming place that looks like an old Danish
inn, or "kro", sitting on the lake just across from the pirate ship.

 There are decks along the lakeside with moveable shades and heaters, offering al fresco dining and drinking for much of the year. Indoors ... which was empty on the glorious summer day we were here, is all exposed brick, scrubbed wood and shiny copper brewing tanks. The Bryggeriet offers a variety of classic Danish open-faced sandwiches, including a delicious trio of seafood options. There's a heavier menu for dinner.

The home-brew is delicious and there's a separate snaps list for those all-important toasts. (If you're going for a proper Danish lunch, you drink both beer and the local acquit called snaps, saving the later to toast your friends and accompany your fish dishes.) They had some more unusual options including "Porse", or Danish bog myrtle, which is extremely herbal to the point of being medicinal. It reminded me of drinks made with another herb, genepi, in the French Alps. While it did provide a satisfying counterpoint to pickled mackerel, it's not something I'd order again. Certainly not when my favourite dill snaps is on offer.

While Tivoli's tiered fee policy brings the nostalgia of the Disney of my youth, is has changed, most notably in its opening days. My husband speaks fondly of an attraction that was only open during the summer, making Tivoli time something particularly precious. No longer. There's now a winter opening for the month of February, presumably to capitalise on Valentine's Day. When Easter is early there's a separate opening or, when late as this year, it's rolled in with summer. In 2019 the gates opened 4 April and will close 22 September. But not for long. The newest holiday opening is for Halloween, 11 October to 3 November. (This one leaves my husband sputtering with rage at the incursion of a commercialised American holiday into European traditions.) Then about two weeks later Tivoli re-opens for its Christmas extravaganza.

Considering that all of my visits before this one were in these extraordinary holiday times (twice at Christmas, once at Easter), I'm delighted about the change. In fact, though summer was a hazy, lazy joy, I think the other times are more spectacular. The Christmas decorations are magnificent, as is a holiday show on the lake with dancing water and lasers. It can also be bone-numbingly cold at that time; booths selling blisteringly-hot mulled wine every few meters make the outdoors survivable. Easter brings a display of bulbs just as impressive as the famous Dutch gardens at Keukenhof, though on a much smaller scale.

Whatever the season, Tivoli is one of the wonders of Copenhagen. Don't miss it.

Krebsegaarden, Relae show why Denmark pulls the food tourists

Early in the next decade the Danish chamber of commerce expects the country to have enough hotel beds to accommodate up to 10 million tourists at any one time. To put that in perspective: The population of Denmark is about six million. No wonder it's gained the dubious honour of being in the top 5 countries suffering "over tourism" (calculated by the ratio of residents to tourists).

What do all these travellers see in this tiny Nordic country? For many, it's all about the food.

Denmark has 27 Michelin-starred restaurants. Two-starred Noma has been named top restaurant in the world four times and three-starred Geranium currently sits at No. 5. (Noma lost its third star and slipped in the rankings while it closed for a year for renovation. Many expect it to regain its dominance this year.) Some of my most remarkable dining experiences have been here, including at the dearly departed Restaurant Herman at Tivoli and at Aarhus' remarkable Domestic. Whether the explosion in interest in Nordic cuisine sparked the tourism boom or vice versa is a "chicken or the egg" conundrum, but whatever the answer there's no doubt this one of the top "foodie" destinations in the world.

Thus it was no surprise that the top priority of travelling friends we were meeting in Copenhagen was restaurant reservations. Our challenge: use my half-Danish husband's insider knowledge, our travel experience and the big network of Bencard cousins to come up with some exceptional meals. We delivered with a traditional lunch at Cafe Petersborg (described in an earlier article here) and two fine-dining wonders: Relae and Krebsegaarden. Relae holds one Michelin star and is anchored by a Canadian. At Krebsegaarden your hosts are two Norwegian chef/owners Mats (pictured above) and Carsten. The food scene is a magnet for international cooking talent as well as diners.

We had the chef's tasting menu at both restaurants with the matching wine flight. Both restaurants have an obsession for local produce and lean heavily towards seafood. Both offer creative twists on preparation and source wines from interesting small producers. Both have charming servers who talk you through the dishes in as much detail as you want. The cost of both experiences was roughly the same (£120 per person; but note this reflects a very weak British Pound at the moment).

Krebsegaarden's quirky differentiator is art. It's a combined gallery and restaurant where the kitchen takes its inspiration from the seasonal exhibitions on the walls. There's a small a la carte menu and an invitation to let the chef design a multi-course tasting menu for your table based on your preferences and hunger. It looked like most people take the latter option. Mats chatted with us a bit, then started the food and wine rolling.

We opened with some delightfully fat scallops, seared with a coat of brown sugar and smoked salt and served with a puree of green apple, onion and dill. Next a salad plate of small pickled radishes, goats yogurt, salad leaves, caramelised walnuts and rye crackers; one of those plates that shouts out "you don't need animal protein to create something special." But there's no way I'd want to go pure vegetarian in a country with such great fish. So on to red fish "escabeche", sitting atop a sweet and sour melange of finely diced green beans, olives, capers and bell peppers, accompanied by a sweet potato puree. How good is this kitchen? That list features at least two things my husband dislikes intensely, yet as prepared here he savoured every bite. The meat course brought a stuffed guinea fowl breast with a "meatloaf" prepared from the dark meat, sitting on a creamy wild rice sauce and accompanied by a mix of carrots, peas and corn that looked exactly like the frozen, mass market stuff.  But tasted very different. As it was supposed to. Mats said the inspiration for the dish was the frozen TV dinners of their youth. They've done homage to the memory while creating something gourmet.

The table was liberated to personal preferences for dessert, with me going for their take on cheesecake (really a misnomer; it was a tangy, cream cheese-like parfait with fresh and pickled strawberries and some crumble for crunch) while others went for creme caramel and the plate of

chocolate petit fours.

There's no Michelin-star daintiness or formality here, and while the plates are attractive nothing is a work of art. With the way Mats and Carsten work the room, discussing inspiration for their dishes, where their ingredients come from and why the wine matches, you feel more like you're dining in their house than discovering a fancy restaurant. If you like something a lot they might bring out extra portions. If your taste leans towards one wine they might pour a similar one to see how you compare them. It was as intimate an experience as we had "private dining" in Grenada earlier this year. We loved everything about Krebsegaarden. This is not, however, a place for a quiet, romantic dinner or just being left alone. Mats is a big personality, and the discussion of what you're eating and drinking here is almost as important as the dining.

Relae is a bit more traditional in that respect, though you'll still have chefs explaining what you're eating and the room's exposed brick walls, natural wooden tables and world music mix are a world away from white tablecloths and old-fashioned fine dining. The presentation, however, leaves you no doubt you're at the high end of the culinary spectrum. From the custom-made tables with individual drawers for each diner's range of cutlery to a staggering array of beautiful plates and bowls to the food's exquisites presentation, Relae is gorgeous.

The restaurant's heritage traces back to Noma; founding chef Christian Puglisi came from the famous kitchen to start a place that was more approachable (and affordable) while still holding on to Noma's values. Those include a veneration for organic produce and local sourcing; so much so that Relae has its own four hectare mini-farm half an hour away and tries to raise as many of their menu elements as possible. It's impossible to miss this. When you arrive, you'll step down into a welcoming space with the kitchen on view and a large central table heaped with the day's produce, as artfully arranged as the displays in Harrods' food halls.

Canadian Jonathan Tam, another Noma alumnus, took over the kitchen three years ago. His Chinese and Vietnamese family roots give both menu and presentation a distinctly Asian feel. The amuse bouche of griddled cucamelon and spears of swiss chard showed the unusual preparation of ordinary veg that would characterise the whole meal. We chased that with shot glasses of potent tomato water before going on to slivers of cured mackerel wrapped in spinach leaves. Very Japanese. Next came freshwater crayfish, a passion of the Danes, served with a creamy crayfish soup that was one of the highlights of the meal. You can, however, get a bit carried away with the vegetable worship. The stack of grilled squash slices covered with cream sauce and sprinkled with marjoram leaves was beautiful, but didn't taste special enough to deserve its solo placement.

The meat course featured delicately flavoured, rare salt marsh lamb and a beautiful swirl of salad leaves plated to look like a crown. Excellent, but the friend who went for the pescatarian option here was the winner with rich turbot in a cream sauce. Vegetable madness let them down again on the sweet front. While incorporating chunks of cooked squash into lemon verbena ice may prove the point for the possibility of using vegetables for every course, it's an underwhelming end to a meal if you're a dessert lover.

If I were hosting a vegetarian, Relae would win hands-down. It's a more thought-provoking experience in the way it uses its ingredients, and is probably more "Instagrammable." But I'd give the edge to Krebsegaarden on the overall experience and my satisfaction across all of their dishes.

Even at its worst, Copenhagen is worth the effort

The Danish countryside in August is a vacationers paradise. While most of Europe heads south, this rolling land of farms, long beaches, comfortable manor houses, half-timbered villages and Viking heritage is little explored, especially after the Danes go back to school in the middle of the month.

The same can not be said of Copenhagen, which is now so firmly established as a capital of cool and a culinary hot spot that its normal crowd of visitors accelerates to a heaving mass in the summer holidays.

It's almost impossible to walk in a straight line down the famous pedestrian shopping street of Strøget. You'll wait in a long queue for one of those famous Danish hot dogs and every canal cruise leaving Nyhavn is packed to the gunnels. The crowds, unfortunately, seemed to bring out things I'd never noticed in usually pristine Denmark: beggars, rubbish blowing down streets, homeless people and crime.

Sadly, we were the victims of the last as ... returning in a taxi from dinner one night ... a man assaulted my husband on the steps of our hotel, stripped him of his watch and ran off. Two conscientious police officers were on the scene in 15 minutes, took a full report, collected the hotel's cctv of the event and even did a swab of my husband's arm in hopes of finding the bad guy's DNA. (Tourists, don't expect that in London!) Their care, and the horror of the hotel receptionist who saw it all, somewhat assuaged the shock of the whole thing. But we learned a lesson: tourists should be as wary in Copenhagen as anywhere else in Europe during high holiday season.

Fortunately, crowds are a relative thing. Nowhere in the Danish capital is going to be as unpleasantly jammed as Florence or Versailles, and most people stick to a very narrow tourism flight path. It doesn't take much to step outside of it and see other wonders. Though the area near the (underwhelming) Little Mermaid statue is uncomfortably packed, if you linger at the far more impressive Gefion fountain nearby you'll find a comfortable seat from which you can appreciate the cascading waters and watch busloads of tourists on the far side of the fountain trudging to and from the more famous landmark.

Walk a few yards Southwest and you'll be in the pretty Churchill Park, almost free of tourists. St. Albans, the English church on its edge, is well worth a visit. At the time of its construction Britain's Princess of Wales was a Dane (Alexandra), so the building went up with significant royal backing. Royal Doulton contributed a custom-created font, lectern and reredos, now recently cleaned and well worth a detour for decorative arts geeks.

So is a fantastic life-sized sculpture of a wind-whipped Valkyrie on horseback, on the other end of the park.

Even the main attractions aren't so bad if you bide your time to let the tour groups pass by. There are, however, more of them than ever to dodge. Copenhagen's tourism board said it expected a record 1.2 million cruise ship passengers to visit Denmark this year, almost all of them stopping off in the capital. Fortunately they're usually on tightly-timed, escorted tours so never linger long in one place. This was particularly obvious in the National Museum, a treasure trove of pre-historic and Viking artefacts and one of my favourite gift shops in town. I've written a full article about it here.

Even if you've visited the collection before, it's worth a return to check out the new "Meet the Vikings" galleries. They've divided opinions in Copenhagen, and in the Bencard family. Clearly feeling pressure to modernise and no doubt influenced by the reach of Amazon Prime's television show, the museum has turned three galleries over to a blatantly populist approach. Created by a Danish designer and TV presenter named Jim Lyngvild, the exhibition plucks some of the most significant pieces out of the collection and uses them to "dress" imagined Vikings. We see the characters and the artefacts in highly-detailed, oversized photos and in vividly-lifelike models (complete with tattoos, scars and showy moustaches.) Artefacts are in cases below and beside the characters. You're even invited to sit on the king's throne.

It's good fun and does bring this world to life, but there's a lot of imagining and "what if" going on here. I thought it was a fun way to spark the imagination and get kids (or simply the less interested) into the topic. My husband was irritated by the leaps into historical fiction. When it opened last year, a lot of serious art historians were frustrated than the museum poured money into this at the same time it eliminated more than 20 jobs. Visit the exhibit to make up your own mind; it's included in general museum entry.

You'll be both cruise-group and controversy-free at the Medical Museion, an unlikely destination unless you are in the health care field, studying to join it or have a relative who's a curator here. Our detour to say hello to my husband's cousin turned into an unexpectedly fascinating hour of exploration.

There's a large collection of medical samples, not for the squeamish, assembled by doctors a century or more ago to study the human body and its diseases. An architectural highlight is the neo-classical dissection theatre, a grand indoor amphitheatre facing a "stage" backed by tall windows letting in all-important light. In the basement there's an award-winning exhibition (curated by Adam Bencard) called Mind the Gut, which examines the relationship between the brain and the stomach. (Something I, sadly, have far too much experience with. Though it does provide you, dear reader, with a lot of fine restaurant reviews.) There's a lot of fun stuff to balance the academic inquiry here, including an artsy and entertaining film that shows how digestion works (yes, really) and an interactive quiz that generates your healthy mind and gut diagnosis.  I'm supposed to always remember to escape and not let ideas leak away. No change there, then.

Neither tourists nor locals seem to take much notice of another of my favourite sites in Copenhagen: the central train station. People make pilgrimages to see the station in Porto, Monet immortalised Paris' Gare du Nord, yet I find this building just as striking and almost unknown. There's little information in any guide books about it, other than revealing that it was built at the start of the 20th century and designed by Heinreck Wenck in what's known as National Romantic Style. This was a bit like the Gothic Revival in the UK, but when the Brits looked backwards, the Danes mixed their historic architecture with modern elements to come up with something more like Viking Art Deco.

The station is most striking for its wooden roofs, both in the main hall and the train shed, which give the buildings a grand yet deeply historic feel. The exterior is castle-like, and both interior and exterior share design elements recognisable from the collections back at the National Museum: Romanesque arches; ironwork in looping, Viking-style filigree, statues of Danes in historic dress, crests in glazed terracotta, stained glass windows. It's a delight. And is one of the easiest and most direct connections from airport to city centre in all of Europe. If you're flying to Copenhagen, don't waste your money on a taxi. Take the train into town and enjoy this architectural masterpiece on your way through.

There's a vast variety of hotels within a short stroll of the station, but it's worth appreciating some nuances of geography. To the North and East of the station's main entrance are some of the city's most expensive lodgings. The pleasure grounds of Tivoli and its world-class Nimb Hotel are literally right across the street from the Eastern exit from the main hall. Exit to the West, however, and you're in the old red light district. As such places go, this one is fairly innocuous and the city is doing its best to redevelop it into a trendy tourist area. In the blocks closest to the station it's mostly hotels and restaurants. There's none of Amsterdam's blatantly seedy sexuality on display, and the less observant wouldn't even note the change in neighbourhood. In the four square-block area between our hotel, the station and the neighbourhood dividing line of Vesterbrogade, there was one low-key sex shop and one "gentleman's club" with fairly upscale branding. I wouldn't have noticed the handful of working girls on the street corners had my husband not pointed them out.

Though the hotels here are just a few blocks from their posh counterparts, the subtle shift in neighbourhood brings the prices down. And perhaps makes management try harder. The Andersen Hotel here is my favourite of all the places we've stayed in four trips to Copenhagen. The staff works hard to earn their boutique branding, with hand-written notes welcoming you to your room, a free wine happy hour in the afternoons and an honour bar at other times, and a basket of knitting in the lobby ... which feels more like a living room or cocktail lounge than a hotel ... inviting you to make scarves for homeless people. The rooms have individual temperature control, including air conditioning, which is a bit of a luxury in old European buildings. The decor includes fun light fixtures and splashes of bright colour, a relief in a country where traditional Danish modernism can fade into boredom when applied on a corporate scale.

Unfortunately, I also have to factor getting robbed within clear view of the hotel's front desk into my review. (It was 11:30 at night. Late, but by no means unsociable hours.) The hotel staff was mortified, getting the police there quickly, apologising repeatedly and leaving a note and chocolates on our bed the next day. I would happily return here with my husband or a group of friends and keep my guard higher, but I wouldn't recommend it for a single female traveller.

Bottom line: Copenhagen is worth visiting at any time of year, but August can make this delightful city hard work. Spring and autumn are much better for drinking in the city's laid back aura.