July 2 - Around Copenhagen

Breakfast buffet in the hotel, talk to various other riders who are in various states of relaxation or panic, depending on their plans.

I set off for a walk around the canal in front of the hotel.  This is the view from the front door.


 

An interesting sign - I'll bet it was put there as a result of some unfortunate incident.

In the distance is this church tower with the serpentine spire.  It is called Church of our Saviour - I'll try to get up it for the view sometime later this week..

I think this is just a residential building, but the brickwork is so ornate.

My first 'official' stop today is the Tivoli Gardens Amusement Park.  It has the 'standard' rids, but they look very old and colourful.  Also, they are packed in very tightly, giving the park a different feel than, say, the PNE Midway..

Tivoli was opened in 1843, making it the second oldest amusement park in the world.  The oldest is also Dansih.

This ride is guaranteed to make your tummy twist.  The planes spin around on the long arm very fast while rolling.

A much more placid & pleasant ride.

There are a number of classic Merry Go Rounds in the park.

The arcade midway.

I haven't been featuring ugly fountains lately but this 'thing' deserves a mention. Whadoyathink?


Another nominee.


















The Railway Station is across from Tivoli, so I took the opportunity for a look.  The huge wooden roof trusses were interesting.

 The main concourse has been turned into a food fair (don't ask me how much I paid for a Starbucks).

Leaving the Railway Station and heading through the shopping district.  This is called the 'Holy Ghost' Church, founded in 1238 and finished in 1594.  It burned in the great Copenhagen fire of 1728.













I happened to look into a canal at the right time and saw these broze statues in the water - the light was just right.  They are called 'Agnete & the Mermen.'  The statues were installed in 1992.  Reminds me - I have to put The Little Mermaid on my todo list.







We don't know why this tower has a pink ring.  I asked at the hotel desk and they hadn't even seen it.

The church might be the St. Nikolaj Church.   Mr. Gogle can't help me out.  I'll keep digging, intrepid reporter that I am  😃



Time to end. Just for fun 5 or 6 of us are going non a 110 km ride tomorrow, to visit Kronborg castle and Fredenborg Palace (if FRED has his coordinates straight).

July 1 - Sakskobing to Copenhagen

Last day of the tour - 125 km into Copenhagen.

First photo - this is from the top of our highest hill - the bridge at Orhoved











A very nice bonus today.  Klaus, who was on our South America ride (more correctly, we were with him), met us in Sakskobing yesterday and invited the South American crowd for coffee & Danish at his house in
Vordingborg.  A very nice visit !  Here we are getting ready to go - that's Klaus' wife Helle.

 Thatched roofs - I've seen this a couple of times - they thatch the peak and then hold it down with wood pieces. 












The outskirts of Copenhagen.  It is supposed to be the most bicycle friendly city in Europe.  They even provide handrails to hold onto while you waiting for a stop light.  Here, a local is demonstrating.







 We're there - our hotel in Copenhagen.












I'm there!!!














We're right on the river - one of the canals nearby.  There are some really swish boats here!

This is actually a time of high activity for some in the group, as they need to pack up their cycles and head out in the morning.

Since I have time I hose myself down (ie. shower) and head out for a walk before dinner.   Here is the Amalienborg Palace.








The statue in the square in front of the palace.














Our "Last Supper' together








Evening light on a building.

It's Monday now - I told you this would be late.

Today's missions:  
-Clean up my junk!!!
-Walk about town
-Suss out some shopping
-Plan a cycle trip for tomorrow.  EH?  A group of us are considering a 108 km circuit to Kronborg Castle (inspired Hamlet), Fredenborg Palace (the summer palace) and back....    Maybe some of us got too much sun yesterday!

Will try to put more photos in tonight.

June 30 - Lutjenburg to Sakskobing

Last morning in Germany and the 2nd last day of the Pub Ride.  Another beautiful day.  We ride 62 km to the ferry, on it for 45 minutes and then another 27 km to Sakskobing, Denmark.

Very similar countryside to the last few days.

Another hay bale person, announcing the sale of Strawberries (Erdbeeren).   I think this was a U-Pick.











A house under construction, interesting (at least to me) because they are using Styrofoam blocks filled with concrete for the basic structure and then adding brick facing.








First glimpse of the Baltic Sea (Howachter Bucht  or Bay).

If you look carefully at the far field, you see pairs of tractor wheel tracks.  They use these for access instead of putting roads in the fields, maximizing the crops.  And it looks nice when done well.









Crossing the bridge to Fehrmarn Island, with the ferry terminal at Puttgarden

There are ferries every 1/2 hour all day for a 45 minute ride, so there are lots of ferries.  Here's one of the others, similar to the one we're on.











One of the open water wind farms, on the Danish side.

Hardly a breeze can get through there without getting picked up by a turbine.













Docking in Denmark

One of our first bike paths.  This is a 2 way version for bikes only.  Note the dotted line.

In Germany and the Netherlands cities, bike paths were often designated with red bricks in the sidewalk.  Here, they use a solid white line to separate humans and bikes.

Our Hotel in Sakskobing.  The hotel name (Hotel Saxkjobing) is spelled differently than the town name.













It's not a big town.  This is the main square. 

An after dinner walk up a street in search of some ice cream.  Didn't find any - it's Saturday night, they've rolled up the town and apparently I walked in the wrong direction.

Note the church - the arrangement of the windows (eyes & mouth), clock (nose) and lines in the brickwork (cheeks) kind of gives it an astonished or worried expression. 

Also, check out the first white house on the right.  The 3 windows to the right of the door are not aligned, almost in an arc.  I don't now if this is wall settling, or intentional.

I notice some of the oddest things, eh?





A little further up the street is this park or cemetery.  It's walled off with a 3 foot wall and a locked gate, so I didn't get nosey.

Another street - this one seems to have more upscale houses.  I walked up another that was tree lined and all the houses were set back far enough for front yards and grass.

The architecture isn't strikingly different than what I've seen in the previous countries, but there is an different feeling here.  Perhaps it's me being apprehensive because I can't speak a word of Danish.  No problem though, because many of them know enough English to sort us out.

A bit of bad news.  We were warned prices are expensive over here.  Two 1/2 litre draft beers set me back over $19 Canadian.  This is due to the Danish tax system.  Apparently, if you want to buy a lot of beer for a party it is cheaper to buy Danish beer in Germany and bring it back over on the ferry instead of buying it here.  We saw at least one car on the ferry fully loaded with beer.

Off to Copenhagen tomorrow.  We are having a big wind up dinner, so I might not be writing anything until the next day.

June 29 - Hamburg to Lutjenburg

Another beautiful morning to ride.  We convoyed out of Hamburg, which took longer than expected.  We kept getting separated by traffic lights necessitating waits to catch up, some navigational miscues and a flat tire.  But we made it eventually.

This was cute.  See the little tiny girl in front of the man in the white shirt.  She inserted herself into the front of our line and wasn't going to let any cyclist pass her!  She was just pounding away on her push scooter.  That's her mother on the left.

We see very young kids out cycling on tiny bikes.  They're learning at a young age and don't seem to have a fear of bicycle traffic.





Once out of the city we had beautiful farmland to cycle through.  It is a bit more rolling now, not dead flat.  We have been seeing ripening grain crops (wheat, barley?) and a lot of corn.

Most of our route is on cycle paths parallel to the road.  Some are very smooth, some not so much with roots pushing up the pavement.

We managed to find a small bakery for a mid morning coffee & goody stop.  

Lunch roughly half way along in a nice shady spot beside the road.

This picture is after lunch and is of the Grosser Ploner See, a large lake.   Lots of wind kicking up waves.  This looks to be vacation cottage type country with lots of lakefront and resorts.  Still a lot of farms on the non-lake side of the road.


I spotted this barn just past the lake.  The left gable window and underneath the two dormers are what appear to be wire cages, but no  window glass.  Balconies for free range chickens, perhaps?











It's a bit calmer near the north end of the lake.  All in all, a very pleasant ride.












 We're in the quiet town of Lutjenburg, staying at the Hotel Lutje Burg.  Nice town, but quiet, which isn't a bad thing.  (Good beer as always)

Here's the main square

A building just off the square.  This is typical style for brick; there is a lot of stucco around as well.

Here's the view from the hotel room next to me.  Crowded looking back there.  Note the laundry.  Sue (her room) bought some strawberries from a street vendor outside the hotel.. To die for!






Since I'm a little thin on pictures tonight, here's a map of where we are.  We are at the blue dot roughly in the middle.  The Grosser Ploner See is near the bottom left (look for the town of Plon).  Tomorrow we cycle to Puttgarden, take a 45 minute ferry ride to Denmark and then a short 27 km ride to Sakskobing in Denmark.

This map has a larger scale, to show our position relative to Hamburg.  Rodby is in Denmark.

June 28 - Around Hamburg

On my way out I saw this on the ground - sort of sums up Germany's feelings after yesterday's World Cup loss.

A beautiful morning - one of the canals with the boats of one of many of the harbour tour companies.

My first stop was Miniatur Wunderland, the world's largest model railway.  It's unbelievable and much more than just railroads.  Models of part of cities, all sorts of cars & trucks going everywhere & an (almost) fully operational airport.  

The Hauptbanhof.

A port city

The Control Room.  You can see behind the screens - there are a whack (technical term) of Ethernet cables back there.

There were about 5 or 6 people in there at times.  

Part of the Switzerland exhibit

The airport.   Planes were landing, taxiing to the gate, being pushed back, taxiing and taking off.  The model did everything except unload tiny people.

The even had the Millennium Falcon taking off!

Sometimes things go wrong and human intervention is required.  He took off his shoes and very carefully stepped across the model.

It turns out a train was stuck on a tiny light pole that had fallen over.

The last railroad photo I'm including in the blog.  Don't worry - I  can show you more if you want.  This brings out the inner kid in you. 

AND, I never touched anything (it sure was hard not to).

The next adventure was a harbour cruise.  A couple of things surprise me about Hamburg.  First, that it is a harbour city at all.  It's more than 100 km inland, although the harbour is still somewhat tidal.

Apparently in 1189 the Emperor granted Hamburgians the right to sail free of customs duties on the lower Elbe.  

Another surprise is the repair facilities.  I saw a number of floating drydocks and there is also at least one graving dock.  I think the biggest floating drydock can handle a ship of 250,000 tons.  The commentary was in German, so don't quote me.

An  interesting building.

There are locks in various places to help negate the effects of tides.  Here, we're entering one.

The ocean liner Costa Pacifica tied up being provisioned.  It is 290 metres long, 114,000 GT ( I assume gross tonnes) and has an 8.2 metre draft.  That's 27 feet, which gives an indication of the minimum channel and harbour depths required.

I just looked up some info on Wikipedia and ships with drafts of up to 13.8 M (45 ft) can access the harbour.

The cranes of the Altenwerder Container Terminal.  

This shot shows the contrasts of Hamburg harbour.  In front is Landungsbrucken, a centre for tourism;  behind are visible some of harbour cranes for containers and other cargo.

 Another adventure - a tour of an old Russian sub.  Give this one a miss.  I toured one years ago in Victoria and should know better.

It's just a crawl through a plumber's nightmare.

Now this might interest you - a motorized "Kiddy Car" tour.  I dunno, the bus that pulled up right behind them was pretty big.  They have front and rear escort drivers - might be a fun job.

A walk through the Alter Elbtunnel.  It's about 1200 feet long.  There are stairs and elevators at each end to access it.  Cars can use it as well.  It is a pair of tunnels, but one is out of service at the moment.  The best thing about walking through the tunnel - it was nice & cool down there on a hot day.

On the way back to the hotel I stopped by the Bismarck Denkmal (monument).

This interesting structure is called 'Flakturm IV (Flak Tower 4).  It was built in 1942 as part of the anti aircraft defense system.  It survived the war, became housing and I think is being redeveloped now.  

This picture from Wikipedia shows what the area looked like in 1944.  Up to 25,000 people used the tower as a bomb shelter.

Pizza, salad, beer and ice cream (all the food groups) for dinner and a very pleasant walk back to the hotel through a park.

The arch might be part of a ruin - I never found out any info about it.

That's it for Hamburg - back in the saddle tomorrow to Lutjenburg (118 km)