Leanne & Mark's 2023 European Travels

Today is tail end Charlie - the last full day of our trip before we fly home. We planned the first bit of the day and would then see what followed, with a trip to Tivoli in the evening to round out the holiday. We firstly meandered along the harbour front down to Nyhavn, which was only 2 blocks form our hotel. While no doubt a great reminder of times past, it is getting a bit touristy - those bloody tourists are everywhere 😁😁. Still, it was interesting to see and work out how the tall masts got into the harbour with the low bridges. From Nyhavn we wandered over the Inderhavnsbroen (showing true dansih imagination: Inner Harbour Bridge) into Christianshavn. Eventually we came to the Church of Our Saviour. Its beautiful inside and out, but you can also climb to the top - on the outside! 400 steps later and the view is superb, although the last few steps aren't very wide. From Christianshavn we headed to Gammel Strand (Old Beach) to book a canal cruise and had open-faced sandwiches ...

Despite the forecast for a fine day, we woke to drizzle and low cloud - again. While I had been driving on Saturday, Leanne had been coordinating a meeting with several of the kids of my cousins who lived in Copenhagen. We were to meet at Kathrine's (Lone & Tonny's oldest) flat together with her brother Rasmus and Nanna (Mette's youngest) and her partner Ulrik. Leaving to drizzle, we took the Metro (a great driverless, underground train system) to Norrebro. We had a great morning getting to know them and catching up - we hadn't seen Kathrine or Rasmus since they were kids 36 years ago, but Nanna had studied in Tassie in 2014.  We also met Kathrine's cute 3yo son Carl, who is a ball of energy (until he slowed down) but is great around strangers (he was very taken with Michael when he visited a few months ago). After some more farewells and invitations to visit us in Oz, we headed back to the Metro (now in sunshine) to Kongens Nytorv for a walk down the central pe...

Today is another travel day - its off to Copenhagen for the last few days of our trip. But first, we all got together for a bacon and scrambled eggs farewell breakfast. Lots more laughs and some sadness at having to leave. It has been wonderful to catch up after so many years and seeing Lemvig again (even if it had changed dramatically in the past 36 years). After lots of hugs and a few teary eyes we headed off. We had intended  travelling via Aarhus and taking the ferry to Sjælland (Zealand) and passing through the Holbæk area to visit some of my forbears. However, the winds were still blowing hard (some sailings had been cancelled on Friday night) and visibility was low in the rain, so we gave up on that idea and stuck to Plan B to just drive straight through. The drive was uneventful (despite the on and off again rain) as the Danish freeways are very good and the speed limit is generally 130 km/hr. We stopped frequently for breaks and got to our hotel to drop off our bags at abo...

Friday dawned as a day from hell, with a showery gale making being outdoors miserable. Bente, Peter and Lone arrived for a coffee just as we finished another delicious breakfast. While the locals headed out to the cemetery for some tidying and admin work, Leanne and I braved the elements to explore Lemvig's extensive (not) retail offerings. Leanne did manage to find some Xmas decorations, so we didnt freeze for nothing. The Danes seem to have got into Halloween in a big way with decorations throughout the town. We then strolled down to the harbour and were disappointed (as expected) to not see a fishing fleet - like the rest of the world the big operators have driven the little boats out of business. Lemviv Harbour used to support a large fleet of traditional north sea trawlers, but there are now none operating from Lemvig. Instead the harbour is full of recreational boats. And they were leaning over in the wind even without sails. By then the rest had arrived and we headed to real...