17 june 2024
Books
I suddenly realized what I need to read during this travel: Neil Gaiman's Norse Mythology. So I'm leaving The Left Hand of Darkness aside for the moment and I'll come back to it later.
Travel log
We travelled north today, and by that I mean that we went to the extreme tip of Denmark. The coastal geography makes it so that two different sea direction meet there, making for interesting waves and currents. It's also supposed to be the limit between the Northern Sea and the Baltic Sea, but where seas start and end is very fuzzy in my view.
Anyway, it was a good opportunity to walk on the beach and in the (not THAT cold) sea water, even if that meant a significant amount of slaloming around jellyfish.
We realized later than a lot of the people we saw there may have come from the MSC Virtuoso, a gigantic cruise ship that was docked in the nearby harbour. People were shuttled back and forth from the parking lot to the beach tip by a bus pulled by a tractor, pretty funny.
All in all, a very pleasant experience (weather helped! It was perfect.), better than we expected, actually (we didn't have much expectations :p) And I found postcards (but no stamps yet.)
We went a few kilometers down the coast, where there was an old lighthouse (oldest of Denmark!) and, for some reason, a large trebuchet. We tried going up the lighthouse but I gave up on the very narrow and steep stairs, I was afraid my knees would make going down awkward to impossible. A pity: there was a photo exhibition and the two pictures downstairs were very pretty - I would have liked to see the rest and the view!
We then drove to Pikkerbakken, a viewpoint over Frederikshavn (which we may or may not have called Friedrichshafen the whole day.) Also very nice, we had a bit of quieter time and a snack while looking at the town and its harbour.
To end the day, we decided to drive in the direction of Lindholm Høje, the historical site of an old Viking cemetery and settlement. The road there was scary, we got a bout of very heavy rain and I was really not serene. It receded quickly and it was mostly done when we arrived on site. Beautiful place, a lot of stones - and goats and kids roaming around! (And, evidently, the weather we had encountered had yielded hail there.) There was a museum too, but we arrived too late to consider visiting it.
Finally, we went back to the hotel. Had dinner (cod fillet and vegetables with a caper sauce, apple and almond macaron as a dessert) at the restaurant in front of the hotel, went to see the beach one more time, and came back to the hotel again. Sunset is in an hour and the weather still seems stable - we'll try to go see if we can get a sea sunset this evening!