(top image credits Visit Copenhagen and Ursula Bach )
So, our last day here in Copenhagen. A leisurely breakfast in our hotel this morning as we gathered our plans for the day ahead. No rushing for trips today! We opted to visit the Carlsberg Brewery, and then head back to the waterfront to see the Cycling Snake bridge.
Tomorrow morning we catch a train across to Malmo in Sweden. It takes approx 40 mins and we pick up our rental car from Malmo’s central station. From Malmo we drive up to Almhult to visit the IKEA museum and then carry on to Jonkoping where we stay for three nights.
Tonight also marks the last night staying in a hotel on this trip. I guess I’ve been converted by recent AirBnB stays as to the merits having a whole apartment for approximately the same cost as a hotel room.
The brewery hosts the world’s largest archive of unopened beer bottles from around the world. On display there is a total of approx 18,000 of the total 22,000 bottles held. Why anybody decided to do this I’m not sure.One of the many lovely harbour side bars and restaurants floating within the main canal of Copenhagen Harbour.Looking down Copenhagen harbour from the south west of the city and the modern Sluseholmen areaLovely shape of one of the modern office buildings. I was trying to get the sun at the top tip of the building but would have had to be in the water to achieve it. Hence why it is off centre!The Cycling Snake bridge – a cycle-only bridge that ‘snakes’ by the Fisketorvej shopping mall. Local photographer Ursula Bach has probably taken the best photo of the Cycling Snake – see top imageElephants at the entrance to the Carlsberg Brewery – Apparently Mr Jacobsen, the founder of Carlsberg, sponsored the elephants at the Copenhagen Zoo. The Carlsberg name comes from the name of the founders son, Carl, and the Danish word ‘berg’ meaning a hill, refering to the hill the brewery is built on.Not sure about why the lighthouse is here as part of the Carlsberg Brewery – research continues…..The original entrance to the brewery but now the area is undergoing a massive redevelopment as more shops and flats are constructed
You can certainly get used to all this lovely hot and sunny weather. Crikey aren’t we going to pay for this when the colder seasons come! In the meantime, enjoy.
We are fast ticking off things on the list as our stay here in Copenhagen continues. Today we hired an electric boat from GoBoat and toured around the harbour and canals. Its all together a different perspective being in a boat doing pretty much the same tour we did by kayak. In the kayak you are much lower in the water and can’t see as much, plus compared to earlier in the week when we did the kayak trip, the weather today was a lot sunnier.
In the afternoon we visited several top-end furniture shops looking at the many Danish designers works. The Copenhagen tourist board site gives a very useful guide to the best stores to visit. It was good to see the results of innovation for sale although the prices were sky-high. The most expensive chair was a valet chair that had a 84,000 DKK price tag – that’s just over £ 10,000. Absolutely amazing and I’m not sure who would buy such a thing. Clearly a wealthy collector! One of the most interesting shops was Klassik, which has a focus on selling used furniture from the leading designers.
Today we also squeezed in a quick visit to the inside of the Radhus (Town Hall). This large and spacious building appears to be a popular venue for weddings, having seen three groups come and go during our short visit. It is also the location of Jen Olson’s World Clock.
The Circle Bridge – it was a breezy day on the water as you can see from the ripples on the waterLooking across the city towards Sweden from the top of the Round Tower (http://www.rundetaarn.dk/). Dating back to the late 16th century and believed to be the oldest in Europe, there is a astronomical observatory at the top of the tower.The canals were full of activity todayAnother picture of the Opera House with its massive roofFancy converting an old car ferry. Somebody does since this one is going through the process. It will certainly make an impressive house boat and has an enormous sun deck. Um, now that gives me an idea. Certainly beats the constraints of living on a wide-beam canal boat.
After an overnight storm and a fair bit of rain, today started as a much cooler and fresher day. We hired bikes from our hotel and cycled towards one of the architecture highlights in the Norrebro area. Our cycle continued towards the Circle Bridge, one of Copenhagen’s many bike bridges, and onward to the Opera House. With lunchtime coming up we went to the Copenhagen Street Food centre (https://reffen.dk/en/) and then headed on to the Danish Architecture Centre. (https://dac.dk/en/).
With plenty of time on our hands and two bikes we continued our cycling adventures to the coast where we could look across to the Oresund Bridge (https://www.oresundsbron.com/sv/start). The sea, swimming and the outdoor life seems to be a core aspect of life here in Denmark. With a 96 % English literacy rate, everybody, especially the young, appears to be fluent and can maintain not just a short conversation but a confident and articulate conversation.
Chairs in the Architecture museum – actually surprisingly comfortableLooking towards the bridge connecting Denmark to SwedenThe Opera House – the roof is used by Red Bull for diving competitions!The Copenhagen naval base – F352 has only fired one shell in its entire service life – and that was an accident! All too much for the Navy, so they decided to take her out of service immediately afterwards! The old building on the right is a wooden crane that used to be used to lift out and put back ship’s masts.The Circle Bridge – a cycling bridgeSuperkilen Park, NorrebroLooking down from the “Hill” in SuperkilenLooking down from the Architecture Centre’s cafe balcony
The sky was overcast most of this morning which coupled with some occasional light rain and the high temperatures created a rather humid start to the day. Thankfully, we were on the water for a 2-hour trip around Copenhagen harbour.
Kayaking across Copenhagen’s main waterway and looking at our reflection in the glass front of the ‘Black Diamond’ the Royal Library buildingRafting up to our guide Mario’s kayak – he was extremely informative about Copenhagen’s water front and history
With the weather looking rather damp for the rest of the day we headed to the Danish Design Museum. Below just a very small selection of the many hundreds of chair designs we looked at. All in all extremely interesting not only from a design perspective but also from those that never went into production due to the manufacturing challenges some of the designs presented. The final image is that of a set of turning storage boxes.
This morning we flew from Gdansk across the Baltic to Copenhagen. It was a relatively short flight of just 55 minutes with really good views of the north of Poland, Sweden and Denmark. By 11.30 am we were on a train into Copenhagen main station followed by a short walk to our hotel which is situated close to the central railway station. Its been really hot and sunny today, so we headed straight out to navigate our way around the city.
Tomorrow we have a guided kayaking tour around the city, so hopefully we’ll manage to upload some video footage. Hopefully I’ll also have time to catch up with the words around the pictures!
The colourful houses along Nyhavn. Crikey it was a real tourist hotspot not to mention scorching hotThe gardens of the Bibliotekhaven- a lovely place to sit in the shade for a while…which is exactly what we did!The entrance to the Christiania community – a bit like Camden Lock, London but on a different scale – a self-governing community of approx 850 – 1,000 residents where pretty much anything goes – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freetown_ChristianiaThe town hall of Copenhagen – Radhushaven
June saw him and me take our kayaks out along the north Devon coast from Combe Martin. The village is a lot quieter than the other coastal resorts along this coast and the beach is easy to launch from.
Conditions were perfect with virtually no swell or waves to contend with. We headed to the west exploring remote beaches and caves only accessible from the sea. During late morning some sea mist started to appear over Little Hangman hill (middle of picture below) and drifted down into the valley between it and Lester Cliff. Combe Martin can just be seen on the right.
We were thankful for our sun hats that day, crikey was it hot!
We paddled as far as Small Mouth Bay, exploring a number of the caves in the area. With a changing tide and a brisk wind coming up from the west we headed back along the coast and did some tight inshore exploring around the many rocks and headlands.
One sunny early July day I left home at 4 am and headed up into the Brecon Beacons to do a walk I’ve been wanting to do for some time. I’d had a false start doing this walk a year before when unfortunately the weather closed in rapidly bringing visibility down to a few feet in a matter of minutes. However, the forecast looked good and it was with much excitement that at 6 am I left the Upper Blaen y glyn car park and started my ascent towards Craig y Fan Ddu.
The early morning sun brought out lovely green and yellow colours along the easterly facing escarpment of Graig Fan Las as I continued northward crossing relatively flat ground to pick up the path that follows the Craig Cwareli and Craig Cwmoergwm escarpments towards my first destination peak of Fan y Big.
Lovely early morning sun giving depth to the Graig Fan Las escarpmentLooking towards Cribyn (far right), Pen y Fan (middle) and Corn Du (flat peak to left ) peaks from Fan y Big.
After a quick brew on Fan y Big I pressed on towards Cribyn. Temperatures were rising rapidly by this point and were heading towards 20 deg C, with several hours before midday, it was going to become a fair slog as I climbed up Cribyn’s steep ascent of 795 m (2,608 feet).
Looking towards Pen y Fan (on left) from Cribyn. The lake on the right is called Llyn Cwm Llwch.
With temperatures continuing to rise, I took on more fluids and snacks before dropping into the col on the western side of Cribyn and starting the pull up to Pen y Fan 886 m (2,907 feet).
Looking west from Gwaun Cerrig Llwydion towards Fan y Big (peak just out of view on far right), Cribyn (next left), Pen y Fan (just left of centre) and Corn Du (left side)
From Corn Du it was an easy and gently sloping downhill walk followed by a short and sudden descent to the Lower Neuadd reservoir.
A really great day’s walk, loads of people out taking part in a variety of charity walks and challenges. Pity those with their overnight bergens, dehydration will have been an issue for many people walking in the hills that day.
A bit of last minute sightseeing today here in Seattle. We joined an organised tour to the Boeing factory in Everett just outside of Seattle. It was well worth it. Before our allocated time slot for the factory tour we took a look around the exhibit hall which includes a full sized 777 jet engine, a cross section of an 787 fuselage and various other parts of Boeing aircraft.
The factory operates 24 hours a day, with approx 20,000 people working in a single shift, most of which are in the main production facility which is the world’s largest building. We weren’t allowed to take cameras or phones into that building but frankly it would have been difficult to capture the vastness of the building. From overhead gantries we viewed the production line of the 747, 777 and 787 aircraft. You simply cannot get your head around the sheer size of the factory. With a floor area of 4.3 million square feet and a total volume of 472 million cubic feet, it swallows up large numbers of these large aircraft in their various stages of construction. If you ever have the chance to board one of these via steps instead of an air bridge only then can you appreciate their bulk. Looking down on a factory floor with four 747s in a line you suddenly start to appreciate how big the building actually is. Apparently all of Disneyland Florida can fit into the building with over 12 acres of spare space.
The afternoon we took a final look around some different parts of the city, first stop being the Amazon HQ. The company employs 25,000 people at its headquarters here in Seattle, and according to their website, 20% of them walk to work. The company continues to expand here in Seattle and is forecast to occupy 20% of available prime office real estate around the city. Amazon also wants to bring back some nature to the downtown area with the creation of some Eden-project like biomes called the Amazon Spheres.
Amazon are starting up their Amazon Go service here which promises to provide the next generation of retail experience. The focus is initially food, something the company is making a key priority moving forward. Only last week did they announce they have bought the Whole Foods Market group.
An evening packing for us tonight in advance of our flights back to Bristol via Schiphol tomorrow.
Inside 777 product line – image courtesy of BoeingHim standing beside a Boeing 777 engineBoeing exhibit hallAmazon HQ building and the SpheresAmazon Go. It is still in beta testing and only employees are allowed in. Apparently they have experience some technical difficulties that has delayed the launch until later this year.
