Road Trip

The Easter holiday is a big vacation time for Denmark, and so I had Thursday, Friday, and Monday off of work. We took advantage of these days off to take a road trip to see parts of Denmark we had not visited before (which basically means anything outside of Copenhagen). This is a glimpse of our trip, and there are many more pictures on our Picasa site.

We rented a car from the airport, and headed west on highway E20. This highway is like I-80 in the US in that it crosses the entire country, but here crossing the country takes only 3 hours rather than 5 days. Below is the route we took over 3 days. Copenhagen is in the far east, on the island of Zealand. We crossed the island of Funen in the middle to get to Jutland, the long peninsula in the west that borders Germany.

Our first stop in Jutland was in the town of Jelling, which is famous because of two runic stones that were put there around the year 900 by Gorm the Old and Harald Bluetooth, two of Denmark's first kings. They are covered in runic writing, and one has an image of Jesus carved in it proclaiming Denmark to be a Christian nation. This stone is known as Denmark's birth certificate.

After our stop in Jelling, we drove to nearby Billund, which is home to Legoland. This amusement park is of course geared toward kids but we had just as much fun there. There is a big section of the park called "Miniland" that has Lego models of famous places in Denmark; here is Amy in front of Copenhagen's Nyhavn harbor:

There are also models of famous places from other parts of the world:

It was a really fun place to visit, and the sculptures there were simply amazing. We ended day 1 of our trip at a Bed & Breakfast in Ribe, which is in southwest Jutland.

The following morning we explored Ribe, Denmark's oldest town. It was first settled around 710, though most of the buildings currently standing are from the 1600s. Many houses really show their age, with sagging and crooked walls and roofs:

Ribe also has a large cathedral called the Ribe Domkirke that was built around 1200. We couldn't go inside because of Good Friday services, but the outside was quite pretty.

The town was extremely quiet on Friday, with only one or two cafes open. All the rest of the shops were closed for the holiday. However, we enjoyed strolling the cobblestone streets before hitting the road again.

We drove north from Ribe to the northernmost city in Denmark, a town called Skagen. We arrived in time to see the sunset over the North Sea. It was simply gorgeous, and the guidebook's prediction of people applauding the sunset turned out to be true.

Saturday morning we ventured along the beach to the northernmost point in Denmark. The wind was brutal and the sand was soft, which made walking very difficult. There's a reason it was so deserted that morning!

At the tip you can see the waves from the Baltic and North Seas crashing together from opposite sides. All along the horizon we could see massive ships making their way through the water - this really is a busy shipping lane.

Also in Skagen we stopped to see a sand-buried church. While the church was an interesting site, what most caught our attention was where the information booth buys its toilet paper:

After leaving Skagen we drove to the Nordsøen Oceanarium to see some of the aquatic life from this part of the world. There we saw two sunfish, which are unlike any other fish we've ever seen:

The aquarium there is big enough that fish are able to swim in schools. It was fun watching them move as if they were one big animal.

From the aquarium we headed back to Copenhagen. This drive that crossed pretty much the entire country took only four and a half hours.

We really enjoyed our road trip, and were happy to be able to see more of Denmark.