We left our apartment in Odense after breakfast this morning. It was just a short drive to our first stop of the day which was Egeskov Castle near Kværndrup.
I wasn’t really sure what to expect as Egeskov to be completely honest, but was impressed by how much there was to do. The extremely well kept gardens were divided in to sections with titles such as The Kitchen Garden or Renaissance Garden. There was also the Hop Garden, a Rose Garden and my favourite area, the Garden of Life.
As well as the gardens there were exhibitions on motorbikes, classic cars, early Danish forms of transport, amongst other things.
Above: This VW Campervan, on display in the exhibition on classic Cars at Egeskov, is well travelled! This puts my car to shame, I don’t have half of these flags on the back of mine!
All of this comes before going in to the castle itself, which is still used today The majority of the castle is open to the public apart from the private quarters of its current owner – Michael Ahlefeldt-Laurvig-Bille. Even wandering around inside the bits which were open to the public, I didn’t feel like I was in an old castle: I felt like I’d walked in to someone’s home!
We spent around 2.5 hours at Egeskov and could easily have spent the whole day there – but we had some driving to do. After a quick lunch sitting outside in the Water Garden, we returned to the car and swet the sat nav for Copenhagen.
The route to Copenhagen took us over the Great Belt Bridge (Storebæltsforbindelsen) – and in driving over this bridge we left Fyn and arrived on the island of Sjælland (Zealand – nothing to do with New Zealand though, that’s named after the Dutch province of Zeeland, where I’ll be staying on Saturday night).
On arrival in Copenhagen, we parked the car not far from the hotel. Being right in the city centre, it took a while to find somewhere to park, that was also partly because I had to get to the car park on the other side of the street to be on the same side of the road as the hotel.
The street I refer to is H.C. Andersens Boulevard: Described on Wikipedia as “the most densely trafficated artery in central Copenhagen“. I had 3 lanes of traffic in each direction to get across so finding the right moment to change lanes and eventually do a u-turn 1km past the hotel proved tricky.
Once settled at the hotel we went for a walk in the city centre. We went down to the Nyhavn (New Harbour – although ironically it’s the oldest part) and after walking around and taking photos, we decided on a 60 minute harbour boat tour for 50 kr each, allowing us to see the city from a different perspective.
After the boat trip we walked along to the Little Mermaid statue, Den lille Havfrue located on a rock on the waterside. Despite it being a very small statue there’s always quite a crowd nearby taking photos of it.
We had a dinner at a restaurant by the Nyhavn, and took a look around the souvenier shop. I had instructions (from the lady who ran the place we stayed at in Odense) to add a something Danish to the collection of national and regional flags stuck on the back of my car – I’ve opted for a København shield and have also added the Swedish flag in preparation for tomorrow.
Tomorrow we’ll spend the morning in the city (we’ve got 24 hours on the car parking so no particular rush) – in particular we want to climb the tower and also see the Changing of the Guards.
In the afternoon we’ll drive over the Øresund Strait via a 4km tunnel then 8km bridge, to get to Sweden where we’ll stop in Malmö before heading to stay in a B&B near Ystad. If we have time we’ll try and get down to the coast to visit the beach.
I’m off to bed now.
Godnat.
FH.
Today’s Mileage: 140.1
Accumulative Mileage: 1627.5