Part 5 – Onward to
The next phase of our trip after leaving the Netherlands was
to travel north to Scandinavia. This
section of the blog will describe our brief stay (3 nights) in Denmark, while
later sections will describe the 2.5 weeks we plan to spend in Sweden, Norway, and Finland.
Day 19 – Friday, July
5. Haaksbergen to Kolding, Denmark. The rest of the afternoon and evening was spent
driving through Germany on our way to Denmark.
We drove ~350 miles to reach Kolding.
The majority of the distance was in Germany, passing through the major cities
of Bremen and Hamburg. We changed our seating positions in the car to allow me to elevate my leg. I am now sitting in the right rear seat, with my leg elevated on a backpack stuffed between the two front seats. It is not optimal, but it is the best we can do. Elizabeth has moved up to become the "navigator". We arrived at our
hotel late, ~10 PM, due to our late start.
I had emailed the hotel as we would be arriving after the reception
closed. They left the keys to our room
in a lock box and send us the code. I
had also told them about my broken foot and requested they give us a room
without stairs if possible. They did
even better, giving us a room with wheelchair access which was perfect as it
had grab bars alongside the toilet and a flat walk-in shower with grab
bars. I definitely am getting a better
appreciation for the challenges that people with mobility issues experience on
a daily basis. One other result of my injury is that I need to give myself daily shots to prevent
Day 20 – Saturday,
July 6. Kolding to Copenhagen,
Denmark. Today was Elizabeth’s 16th
birthday! We slept in due to our late
arrival the prior night. We had about
150 miles to drive to get to Copenhagen.
Along the way we stopped at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde which was
90% of the way to Copenhagen. The center
piece of the museum is the remains of 5 Viking ships that had been sunk around
the year 1000 as a defensive measure to block one of the channels and provide
protection against invaders approaching by water. They were discovered and excavated in
1962. Archaeologists learned a lot about Viking
shipbuilding and ship types as the excavated ships were of different types. The partial hulls of the ships are on display
in the main exhibition hall along with informative displays with English
translations. In addition to the static displays,
the museum has a shipyard where they build historically accurate period ships
using traditional techniques They have
built a replica of one of the excavated ships and sailed/rowed it to the
British Isles and back to learn more about how the Vikings made their long voyages. We very much enjoyed the museum. They had wheelchairs available for guests
with mobility issues like me, and I received free admission since there were
some areas of the museum that were not accessible to wheelchairs. The museum was perfect given my current
physical restrictions.
After we left Roskilde we went to Copenhagen and checked
into our hotel. It was a very large
hotel with very tiny rooms – barely room for two built in bunks and space in
the middle for our luggage. The bathroom
reminded me of the bathroom in a very small RV – with showed, toilet, and sink
in one small room. When you take a
shower everything in the room gets soaked – make sure you set the toilet paper
out before you turn on the shower! My
foot was hurting and Matthew was tired after we arrived, so we stayed at the
hotel and Karen and Elizabeth went into Copenhagen for the evening. They spent several hours at Tivoli Park, which
is a mix of gardens, water features, amusement rides, and live performing arts on
outdoor stages (ballet, music, ...). A
one of a kind place. They stayed until
the fireworks show at midnight.
Day 21 – Sunday, July
7. Copenhagen. Due to my foot I elected to spend the day
resting in the hotel as there was no way for me to spend the day walking around
Copenhagen. Karen and the kids took the
metro into town to explore. The spent a
lot of time at the National Museum, learning about the history of Denmark, with
exhibits going all the way back to the Stone Age. They also explored a number of other sites
around town, including the Royal Palace, the little mermaid statue, and town
hall. Matthew wanted to climb the tower but
it was closed on Sunday. There was also
a sandcastle competition going on that they enjoyed.
Day 22 – Monday, July
8. We left Denmark at about noon,
heading across the Øresund Bridge to Sweden.
The bridge was completed in 1999, and is the longest combined road and
rail bridge in Europe. It has spurred a
lot of economic development in the southern part of Sweden with the quick link
to Copenhagen. It is a dual carriageway bridge/tunnel,
with automobile traffic on the top and rail underneath. The bridge is nearly 8 km long and the
remainder of the link between Denmark and Sweden is a 4 km tunnel. We drove a total of 260 miles (415 km) in
Denmark. Total distance driven to date,
2210 miles (3560 km). Our favorite things in Denmark:
Additional note: So far our car choice is serving us well. The GPS was a bit non-intuitive to figure
out, but ultimately I got it to do what I wanted. It has a couple of quirks. If you were to tell it to go to the chateau
at Chambord (which you selected from a
list of tourist attractions in France built into the GPS), it would tell you the
destination is unreachable. Apparently
it thinks you actually want to drive right into the chateau. Since they have these destinations in their
database it seems like it would make more sense to take you to the closest road
or parking lot vs. the coordinates for the center of the attraction. Even though it tells you the destination is
unreachable, it does calculate directions, although at the end it wants you to
keep going over the curb, across the sidewalk, and through the front door. J It also stopped giving verbal directions a
couple of times, even though voice prompts of where to turn was enabled. The fix was to change to a different voice,
and then change back to the voice we wanted.
The car is not getting quite the mileage specified, but over the first
~2000 miles it has averaged 48.0 MPG (or 4.9 l/100km in Euro speak). That is better than any comparable car in the
US would get. It does have some nice ECO
features, like shutting the engine off automatically when stopped at a traffic
light. It then restarts when you push in
the clutch. Going with a diesel has also
been a good choice based on fuel prices.
When I had made the reservation, an online search indicated that diesel
was ~€0.10 less per liter (~$0.50 less per gallon) than gasoline across
Europe. However, we have seen a much
bigger difference, with diesel as much as was ~€0.34 less per liter (~$1.65
less per gallon) than gasoline. If the car only had a built in place to elevate my broken foot it would be perfect. J
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