Day 25--Goodbye Denmark, Hello Sweden!

As I mentioned yesterday, we were going to take the train into Copenhagen. It would have been about an hour's ride to get to the city (and who knows how long to navigate our way to the city center). Instead we had about 20 minutes on the train--excellent!

Across from the Train station was Tivoli. It is a big amusement park right in the center of Copenhagen.

I can only imagine how much it cost to get in.

Instead, we did a ride around. We went to Christian's Palace (it was called Christian something). We walked through a arch into a large courtyard. I eavesdropped on the lady doing one of the walking tours. There were the Royal stables, and they had an exercise area for the horses outside in the courtyard.

The courtyard side of the palace.

From there we wanted to head to the Little Mermaid statue. It was quite interesting the number of tour busses. At one point, on our way to Ariel, we were riding down a street that was jam packed with busses trying to get in and out. We were squeezing between busses. It was an...experience!

We found Ariel (along with about a zillion other tourists). The statue is not really that big. 

From there we found the toilets, and then headed out of town. By then it was about 11:00. I was getting hungry. While keeping an eye out for a bakery, I saw this gal riding in high heels (yep, they really do that in Copenhagen).

The bike paths of CPH are really like bike highways. No one goes the opposite direction. No one walks in the bike path. To do so, would mean certain death! Even if you are riding, and you see a bakery, so you stop on the side of the bike path, and you get yelled at--but it's in a language you don't understand, so...whatever...sorry!

The bakery stop was delicious! Feeling much better, we proceeded out of the city. It was pretty easy as we just kept going straight on the same road. It changed names a few times, but no matter.

Soon we were riding along the Coast in glorious sunshine. 

It was really quite pleasant. There was a bike ride going on. They were going the opposite direction as us. There were at least 7700 riders, because I saw one number that high. I stopped to ask a kid who was directing at a corner, how long the ride was. He didn't know. All he knew was that he'd been standing there for 4 hours. Poor kid!

We continued our ride up the Coast to Helsingor. There we caught another Scandlines ferry to Helsingborg, Sweden. The ferry crossing was only 20 minutes. Here are a couple of photos of Helsingor as we were leaving Denmark.

Ah, so that's where the Ark is!

We arrived in Sweden, but couldn't find a Sweden sign. Bummer! All I saw was the Swedish flag.

In Helsingborg, while searching for a bank to get Swedish Kroner, we saw this castle-looking place. We also found a bank. We'll see how long 700 Kr lasts. Things are much more expensive in the Scandinavian countries, than in Germany. But, I knew this.

On our way to Ängelholm, today's destination, we stopped at a Netto grocery store and bought Swedish meatballs for dinner. They were pre-cooked, so all we had to do was heat them up. 

From the grocery store, we had 13 miles to go to Ängelholm. It was more country riding like Germany and Denmark. 

We had mostly a crosswind, but not as bad as in previous days. The road shoulder varied from as wide as in the photo, to not much shoulder. In many places we had a separate path again. When we came to the outskirts of Ängelholm, we stopped at an info board to see where there was a campground. There was just one, and it was 2.7 miles away. The Garmin brought us here, but with an error due to construction, but we made it. We got here at 6:45. The reception office was closed. There was no way to check-in with a tent. We talked to a kid, but he really didn't have any answers, so we just rode around the campground until we found the tent area. There are several tents, most appear to be bike tourists. We set up our tents. I found the showers (free and quite nice). There's a kitchen next to the tent area, so another night without having to use my fuel. There are a large number of rabbits and also mosquitoes (drat!).

After our Swedish Meatball dinner, Christian and I walked out to the beach. It is now the North Sea, so I had to dip my toes in it. Not too bad, really. We wanted to stay for the sunset, but it takes so long, so we took "almost" sunset photos.

Sunset in Sweden!

Total miles today: 55