What, I wondered, did Denmark have to offer besides breakfast pastries, big dogs, and swans with abandonment issues? Since I was just next door in Berlin, I figured that I would take a few days and find out. The very first thing I noticed was that there are a lot of blondes, plus by necessity, their chronological corollary, a lot of older people with really, really silver hair. That, of course, is by no means all.

I stayed at the Radisson Blu Royal, right across the street from the “world-famous” Tivoli Gardens. My room was a very small rectangular box and when I drew the curtains before going to bed I thought that I might actually be in a shipping container filled with Scandinavian Design furniture and that when I opened the curtains in the morning I would be in a warehouse somewhere in suburban New Jersey.

Luckily for me, I was disabused of my first impression when during the site tour of this 5-Star hotel I was told that my room was the smallest in their inventory. After silently overcoming my indignation (Didn’t they know who I am? – and I’m even paying for this room!), they showed me a really cool hotel.

It turns out that the Royal, built in 1960, was the first true Designer Hotel in that everything from the architecture to the doorknobs to the silverware were designed by the same guy. It is a Historical Landmark and architectural students from around the world routinely troop through the lobby “oohing and ahhing” at the circular staircase in the lobby and just about everything else they can ooh and ah at.

It also turns out that this is where President Obama (not to mention Oprah) stayed when they were in town, it’s where the Beatles stayed when they played Copenhagen, and is the kind of place where just about everyone famous from 1960 on has stayed. Because of its history, they have kept it as faithful as they could to its original design, and Don Draper would feel quite at home here (for those who don’t know who that is, you are missing out big time by not watching “Mad Men”). If you decide to look at it for a meeting, think Royal Club rooms for your guests. Start with those and work up, not down.

A much more modern Design Hotel in the city is the Skt Petri (not a typo), the ultra-hip and modern place to be in Copenhagen. It was originally a department store, of all things, and is located in a great neighborhood in the older part of the city just steps away from the main shopping streets. The rooms are all a little different in shape and size, but the place is very cool, and different. Those Danes and that Design thing.

A completely opposite and Old-World European style is the grand old d’Angleterre, the classic grande dame of Copenhagen. Old world elegance and all of that, located just across the square from the main Canal lined with restaurants and photo opportunities. All the rooms are different too, and some are pretty small, but that is just part of the deal when you stay in this kind of hotel. Five Star with charm.

Why Copenhagen? I spent the better part of one day walking the city with Flemming Madsen, Managing Director of First United, our DMC partner in Denmark, and he showed me many of the cool venues available for groups, and explained some of the special programs he can create in and around the city. Too many to list here so you’ll have to ask me. Flemming explained that although there are so many things to do it could easily be a single destination incentive, most groups seem to prefer three days in Copenhagen in conjunction with three days in another Scandinavian destination. His favorite, Copenhagen-Bergen (in Norway), because it combined both Nature and the European city experience, but Iceland-Copenhagen, or Copenhagen-Stockholm (or Helsinki or St. Petersburg) were also popular.

One last note about Copenhagen; It is a beautiful walking city and I seemed to have walked constantly for about three days, rain or shine. There are several pedestrian-only shopping streets that connect with each other and they seem to go on for miles. I am not a fan of shopping, but for those who are, you will think you died and went to Valhalla. Great people-watching, too. And like most cities, you take a few turns off the main drag and you escape all of the tourists and find some cozy little squares surrounded by cafes where the locals hang.

One weird thing though, no matter how much I walked and took side streets to escape the shopping streets, no matter how much I tried to avoid them, I kept coming back to the same place over and over again. This may prove a couple of things: that Einstein was right and space, at least in Copenhagen, is curved; that Copenhagen is actually pretty small and you just can’t avoid the d**n shopping streets; or that there are a nearly infinite number of shopping streets in Copenhagen that look exactly the same. If it is the last one, then I could have been the character in a short story by Jorge Luis Borges, but then I would have been in Buenos Aires, and that will have to be the subject of another blog.

For pictures of this fantastic destination, please visit my Facebook page at www.facebook.com/thecramercollection and click on Photos.