Kronborg Castle is about an hour north of Copenhagen facing Sweden. It was built by a former King, for the same reason that the Robber Barrons along the Rhein built castles. It's primary purpose was to collect taxes from ships that wanted to pass the narrow waterway between Sweden and Denmark. Ever wondered why royalty is called nobility? It's because they have no-ability to do real work, and end up building castles to collect money from those who do. Strangely the castle was free to enter. No taxes or fees to pay. No robber barrons to enrich. But surprisingly, you pay to go see the underground tunnels and also the Royal rooms and the so called maritime museum. None of those were worth paying for. Holger Danske is a Danish mythological giant who sits in the ... read more

We biked around the outskirts of Copenhagen and stopped at a beach for a relaxing day. The topography in the city is relatively flat, and thus ideal for biking. Many locals bike and there's wonderful infrastructure for bikers, including wide bike lanes on pretty well every main street plus bike stands all over the place. ... read more

The Copenhagen Open Air Museum prides itself in preserving past ways of living, including displaying old homes, intact with the technologies of that day, and village level technologies such as wind and water mills. They have moved many old homes that would otherwise have been destroyed, usually wall by wall, and sometimes stone by stone. It's an ongoing living museum, where artisans in traditional garb, use traditional techniques to restore these old places. The windmill had millwrights who not only explained the mechanical functioning of the mill, but started turning the windmill blades to show how the windmill could be turned into the wind. Yes, the entire building is on a pivot and can be turned by two men. This also meant such mills had a maximum weight for the entire building, and thus a restrictions ... read more

The Waden sea is an area of the North sea with huge tidal zones. You can walk out quite far during low tide. We drove West from Kiel to the North Sea in time for low tide. We'd planned on a low tide hike with a ranger. But it was rainy and there was no ranger. We drove onto St. Peters and Odingburg where it got sunny and beautiful.... read more

The day started off badly. The hotel cleaning crew in Berlin had taken away E..'s survival gear that had been left in a plastic bag beside the garbage bin. A few frantic phone calls to reception followed by some discussions with the supervisor of the cleaning crew ensued. We were told that a new staff member was being trained, and received lots of apologies and the cleaning person remembered taking the bag. He went searching in the hotel basement and voila! found the bag. Whew! Instead of chocolates, they served nuts on the train. None of this no nuts stuff that planes now use to shovel cheap pretzels your way. A quick change of trains at Hamburg and onto Kiel. Our friend G.. and his daughter were at the station to greet us. She had even ... read more