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You can’t miss the Copenhagen Harbour Buses if you are on or near the harbour area – bright yellow and constantly going back and forth across the harbour.

Somehow Copenhagen ended up being the best place for us to change planes between the Faroe Islands and Montreal. It was 51 years since we were last in Denmark, and we’d never made it to Copenhagen, so a couple of days looking around the city was the obvious thing to do. September seemed a reasonable time to visit — until we realised our time coincided with the Copenhagen Half Marathon that had brought people from all over the world to fill the hotels and jack up the prices; for the smallest hotel room I’ve ever stayed in we had to pay three times the normal rate.

It’s a safe feeling city, with plenty of public transport and lots of scope for walking, so long as you watch out for the swarms of bikes. But with a badly sprained ankle from the Faroes we had to limit the walking and standing, so in the end much of our exploration of the city was done on a harbour tour boat and a Hop-on Hop-off bus, which still meant we saw a lot in a short time.

The harbour buses operate three routes covering 11 stops along the length of Copenhagen Harbour. There are seven boats in the fleet, all painted bright yellow and black and all entirely electric powered, charging overnight and during stops. They are fully integrated into Copenhagen’s public transit system and you use the same transit passes to pay the fares. A great way to see the harbour, or to travel along and across.

The standard harbour tours start at the land end of Nyhavn, which is the epi-centre of tourism in Copenhagen. These are large (100 seat), open, wide and low boats. And after passing under a few bridges and having to duck down in our seats we realised why they are so low, and why you might want to take one of these tours even if you have already used the harbour buses. Our tour took us not only around some of the harbour, but also through the Christianshavns Kanal and Frederiksholms Kanal where the many low bridges prevent passage of larger boats like the harbour buses.

We very much enjoyed the tour with its commentary — and it let me take plenty of photos of the harbour buses. Apparently when it rains they provide ponchos, and in the winter they use covered boats. The Hop-on Hop-off buses are also ready to cope with the weather; they use double decker buses with an open upper level, but when rain threatened the driver told us all to sit down and at the press of a button a retractable roof covered the upper deck.

It’s a popular tourist city and there are many ways to enjoy it from the water, not just the cruises from Nyhavn and the Harbour Buses. We saw kayaks, small power boats with fancy picnics spread out, water bicycles and float-plane tours. But if you have just a few days my suggestion would be a combination of the harbour tour with its commentary and the Harbour Buses to get you to different parts of the city’s waterfront.