Making a day of the harbour island

Getting there

Refshaleøen sits across the water from the city centre on Copenhagen's eastern harbour edge. The realistic options:

• Bicycle. The Copenhagen answer, and genuinely the most pleasant in daylight. Roughly twenty minutes from the centre on protected lanes. Less appealing at midnight in a headwind.
• Harbour bus. The public boat service is part of the ordinary transit network and turns the journey itself into sightseeing at the price of a transit fare. Check the timetable; it does not run late.
• Bus. A city bus route serves the island. Reliable, unglamorous, and the answer most people should take in winter.
• Taxi or ride-hailing. Straightforward on arrival. Book the return in advance rather than assuming one will be waiting at half past midnight.

The hours before

Do not fill the afternoon with a heavy lunch, and do not fill it with nothing. The useful shape is a long walk and something quiet.

• Walk the island's edge. Fifteen minutes of open water, cranes and wind resets your attention better than any pre-dinner drink.
• Christiania and Christianshavn. Immediately adjacent, endlessly more complicated than its reputation, and an easy hour or three on foot.
• The Church of Our Saviour. The external spiral staircase up the spire in Christianshavn gives you the whole city at once, and it is a genuinely alarming climb. Do it before dinner, not after.
• Amager Strandpark. If the weather is behaving, a short ride away and one of the more surprising city beaches in Europe.

Arrive slightly under-fed, thoroughly walked, and with nothing on your mind. The evening will use all of it.

The wider neighbourhood

Refshaleøen's post-industrial buildings have been colonised by studios, workshops, climbing halls, a large street-food market, event spaces and other restaurants. It is worth understanding that this is not a manufactured dining district: the restaurants arrived because the volumes were cheap and enormous, in the same way that artists did. The result reads as a working edge of a city rather than a destination, which is most of its charm.

Season by season

• May to August. Long light, harbour swimming, everything open. The island is at its most generous and so is the approach.
• September and October. My own visit was in this window and I would choose it again. Clear air, fewer people, the water still in the picture, and better odds on the reservation calendar.
• November to February. Dark by four, and the wind across open water is a serious proposition. The evening itself is unaffected; your walk to it is not. Dress accordingly.
• March and April. Unpredictable. Pack for two different countries.

Getting home

This is the part people forget. You may finish after midnight on an island with limited late-night transport. Arrange the return before you sit down: a pre-booked car, a hotel within cycling distance, or an agreement with a companion about who is staying sober enough to navigate. The last impression of the evening should not be twenty minutes in the cold refreshing a map.