Trip to the tropics

Malmö to Gothenburg

Time for another road trip, so we picked up a hire car and headed north. First stop was was Helsingborg, which is directly across the water from Helsingør in Denmark where we had visited Kronborg Castle (which we could easily see from the Swedish side).

We headed to the marina where there was a "tropical beach" - just a bit of sand a few potted palms, there were quite a few people sunbathing so as long as they believe it's a tropical beach then who are we to argue?

We then walked to the centre of town and climbed the hill to visit the 14th century tower called Kärnan, originally part of the former Danish fortress and the residence of Danish kings.

As we entered Gothenburg we had to deal with a lot of roadwork and bypasses, we made it to our hotel right above the central railway station without getting lost or taking a wrong turn, so we shudder to think how we would have made it without the magic of Google Maps!

Coastal trip

Malmö/Ystad

We headed to the station for our trip to Ystad, a town about an hour away on the coast. On the way we checked out the "Knotted Gun" statue and stopped for a flat white, our quest for a decent coffee is never ending and this time it wasn't too bad.

Arriving in Ystad we found the station was right next to the water, but instead of nice cafes and places to enjoy the view (as we'd hoped), it was just a working port which supported ferries to Poland, amongst other places, seemed like a wasted opportunity to us, especially in this weather.

We visited the tourist information centre to find out how we could get to Ales Stenar, a stone circle that was around 1400 years old, but we were told that Sunday buses no longer ran, so we had to settle for walking the streets of Ystad.

Ystad is a very quaint, pretty town with cute, well preserved brightly painted buildings. As it was Sunday many of the shops were closed, but there was enough open to keep us occupied for a couple of hours, before heading back to Malmö where the festival was in full swing on this 30 degree day.

Away from the crowds

Malmö

Google tells us that an "extreme heat warning" has been issued for the Malmö area .... geez guys, it's only going to be 28!

We did our usual walking tour, not one of the better ones but we still managed to learn a bit about Malmö and Sweden, and cover the main sights in town, including many we'd have missed if we wandered around on our own.

We have really developed a taste for Scandinavian cinnamon scrolls, they make an easy cheap lunch, and it's also important we keep across the types of cakes and other snacks as we go from country to country.

After lunch we caught the train to Lund, a small picturesque university town not far from Malmö. It was good to get away from the holiday and festival crowds in town to somewhere a little more laid back. We had dinner in Lund, and once back in Malmö M went to check out the local metal bands on the festival stage. He said "Void Commander" were pretty good so do yourself a favour and check them out!

Rock on Sweden!

Svendborg (Denmark) to Malmö (Sweden)

We drove back to Copenhagen Airport to return our rental car, stopping along the way to visit Egeskov Castle. 

From Copenhagen airport we bought train tickets to Malmö in Sweden, just 25 minutes away. The train was delayed and the people were building up on the platform, so as we had a lot of luggage we decided that we'd be “smart” and wait for the next train. Of course that train was also delayed so the numbers just grew again. 

When a train finally arrived we hopped on, but strangely very few others did. While we were discussing with other confused passengers what was going on, the train started moving - no turning back now. We learnt that we were only supposed to board if we had a reservation (which we didn't). When the conductor came by we owned up to our error, she agreed that we'd made a mistake, shrugged her shoulders and said "there's nothing we can do about it now", and walked on. So in retrospect, it wasn't really a mistake from our perspective!

We relaxed for the rest of the short trip, as we had a comfortable, uncrowded ride across the famous Denmark-Sweden bridge that had featured in the show “The Bridge" that we had really enjoyed.

After checking in to our hotel in Malmö we went for a walk and discovered that we were staying in town during the Malmö Festival. The streets were packed, there were carnival rides and hordes of teenagers wandering around. 

Not ideal as far as K was concerned, but M was very pleased to see that there was a stage set up where some quite interesting Swedish rock bands were playing, this festival might not be so bad after all! 

Smokers allowed

Odense to Svendborg (via Ærø Island)

Before arriving in Denmark we hadn't realised that the country of Denmark consists of a peninsula (Jutland) and a lot of islands (1419 of them). Today we were going to take a car ferry from Svendborg to Ærø Island.

As the ferry left the harbour we were followed by a large dolphin that would swim just under the surface for a while then leap out of the water, it was quite a show until the ferry pulled away. It was perfect weather for a boat trip, 27 degrees C without a cloud in the sky.

Once on Ærø we spent the day driving around the island and stopping in the pretty towns before catching the 4.30pm ferry back to spend the night in Svendborg. 

Svendborg was a nice place to spend the night, there were bars set up along the harbour and we chose one decked out with sand under our feet so it was (kind of) like being at the beach.

Unfortunately smoking seems a little too popular in Denmark for our liking, and they don't have rules restricting smoking where people are eating or drinking. We had to put up with 20-somethings smoking very close to us, which isn't a problem we usually need to deal with back home.   

Water not included

Aarhus to Odense

Our Denmark summer had finally hit its stride, with up to 28 degrees C expected over the next few days, so its back to being warm again! 

Odense is famous as the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen and we had booked tickets for the museum located in a very modern building in the old town. 

The museum follows his journey of writing his stories using audio descriptions that play depending on where you are standing. His fairy stories could be very dark, so it's no wonder Disney rewrote the ending of The Little Mermaid so as not to scare children! 

Some of the displays were quite clever and brought the stories to life, including the mattresses piled to the ceiling for the Princess and the Pea, and the use of mirrors and video effects for The Emperor’s New Clothes.

Afterwards we stopped at a café for lunch where K asked for a glass of what she thought was tap water, only to be charged $5 for it on the bill! Just another example of how Denmark impacts the hip pocket and the bank balance! 

To infinity and beyond

Esbjerg to Aarhus

We had thought a visit to Legoland in Billund would be worthwhile, but after some research we realised it wasn’t really our thing as it’s essentially an amusement park targeted at children. However as it was pretty much on our route we decided to drive by just to see what it was like from the outside. The first thing that struck us was how many and how big the car parks were, followed by the distance families had to walk from the car parks to the entrance. There were hordes of people with kids, which made sense as ot was also the last week of the Danish summer school holidays. We did a drive by, took some snaps through the car window and then headed on to the Viking Village in Jelling.

The museum exhibition explaining the history and importance of Jelling to the Vikings was very clever and informative. It covered the first king and the role of the village in the beginning of Christianity in Denmark, and used interactive displays and techniques we hadn't seen before. Museums have come a long way from static displays in glass cases!  

The village itself was quaint, the Viking areas were right in the middle of the current modern village so there was a mix of large artefacts and huge burial mounds from the first century, and a well kept church with the headstones of villagers who had only died recently.

K was most amused to discover we were visiting with some of the Australian Equestrian Team who were competing at the FEI World Championships just 40 minutes down the road at Henning.

Our next stop on the way to Aarhus for the night was the absolutely magnificent Infinite Bridge, a circular bridge built from the edge of the beach across the sea. Actually, it wasn't that great, it was just a circular walkway over the water that looked much better in the photos than in real life, you should always be careful with things you read on the internet ....

Aarhus is Denmark’s second largest city and we had a nice evening on the canal which runs through the city.

Hi, Hi Hi

Copenhagen to Esjberg

We caught the train to the airport to pick up our rental car and then headed north to check out Frederiksborg Slot ("castle" to us). Our Danish is coming along well, we can now say hello, which is pronounced "hi", goodbye which is "hi hi", and thank you ("tak"). See, learning another language isn’t that hard at all!

The grounds of Frederiksborg are large and manicured with a magnificent moat and impressive buildings, we wandered around the garden for a while but didn't enter the castle.

From there we drove for a few hours to Esbjerg on the western coast of Denmark, to visit the “Men by the Sea”, four big (9 metre high) sculptures of men looking out across the ocean.

Our hotel in Esbjerg “A Place To” was quite unusual, it looks like a renovated silo but is actually a new tower designed to be sustainable and maintenance free. We were on one of the upper levels with a balcony so we had a wonderful view across the ocean, port and green lands. 

We enjoyed our evening with a meal in the main square, we felt like we weren't in a tourist town but in a more "normal" Danish town as there seemed to be very few, if any, tourists around.

Alas poor Yorick

Copenhagen

This morning we caught the train to Kronberg Castle, famously known as "Hamlet’s castle". K had gone through a Hamlet stage at high school so had this visit near the top of her list. It was raining and cold on the walk from the station to the castle - welcome to summer in Denmark! The castle was well kept and interesting even though there is no proof that Shakespeare ever visited and Hamlet is of course fiction, it was still good to see the back drop for the famous play.

After heading back to town we went for a change of scenery with a visit to Freetown (also known as Christiania) on one of Denmark's islands. The autonomous commune was started in 1971 and we took a stroll down Pusher St where they had little stalls selling cannabis - kind of weird because apparently it's illegal but you wouldn't think so judging by the open trading. The general vibe of the whole area was your usual hippy commune kind of thing (think Nimbin perhaps?) i.e. multicoloured and  generally grotty but still with shops and stalls trying to get some of those the capitalist tourist dollars (or krones in this case!).

It's not that big but it's not that small either

Copenhagen

After seeing the crowds of tourists last night we were a bit wary of going on the walking tour today in case there were too many people, as we'd had poor experiences in the past with big groups.

There were over 100 people but fortunately we were split into five groups. We were a bit surprised to find that three of the guides were Australian, we weren't sure how it would go but as as the tour progressed we realised it was very interesting having one of our own give their perspective of the Danes, and how Danish society differed from ours.

After the tour finished we walked from the Royal Palace area to see The Little Mermaid statue. K was pleasantly surprised to discover the statue was about five times bigger than she expected from all the descriptions she had heard about how small it was (but it is still on the small side).

From there we revisited a few of the areas from the walking tour. The temperature was supposed to be 21 degrees but the wind chill factor made it seem much cooler, it was the coldest weather we'd experienced for quite some time!