The Little Mermaid, a Scary Spire and some Barmy Bicycles!

29th July - 2nd August 2011

We’ve enjoyed each of the Scandinavian capitals this year but we really fell in love with Copenhagen. It felt like a very friendly and open city; a bit rough around the edges perhaps, but great fun and with plenty to see and do.

We spent four days in and around the city and could have stayed for a lot longer. Aside from the drunken street brawl which greeted us on arrival, the city's highlights are many.

The city has a very impressive waterfront which stretches for a number of kilometres and includes the 17th century Nyhavn - a canalside street lined with colourful townhouses, the Black Diamond - the new riverside national library, and the statue of the Little Mermaid out beyond the Kastellet fort. 

We were surprised at just how 'little' the little mermaid is! She's one of the city’s most famous landmarks but she's barely 4 feet tall and she's had her fair share of bad luck, poor love! In the last few decades she's been beheaded twice, had an arm sawn off, and been knocked off her rock with explosives!!

We always make a beeline for a city’s tall buildings and towers and Copenhagen had a couple of fantastic viewpoints in the 17^th century round tower and the Vor Frelsers Kirke.  

The round tower doesn’t have steps but a wide ramp that winds its way up to the top. It was built like this so King Chistian VI could ascend the tower by horse and carriage! The views across the city from the top are amazing and stretch right out to the 8km-long Øresund bridge which connects the country to Sweden.

The Vor Frelsers Kirke (Church of Our Saviour) is one of the most unusual churches we’ve seen on our travels. The church itself is pretty ordinary but the spire is... well... crazy! 

The unusual feature is the corkscrew staircase which allows you to make your way to the very top. It’s unusual because it's very narrow, made of wood covered in what feels like tin, and is ON THE OUTSIDE OF THE SPIRE! It’s a dizzying experience to climb all the way to the top and, at 90 metres high, it's really not for those who have a fear of heights!

One of the city’s most endearing features is its bicycles. Copenhagen is the best city we’ve visited for cycling, mainly because of its fantastic network of cycle paths. In most cases these are like a second pavement complete with traffic lights and pedestrian crossings. And the wide range of bicycles on the roads is amazing, from cargo tricycles to Long-Johns which have a long wheel base with a cargo compartment at the front, all carrying shopping, dogs, kids, drunken partners etc.

We wild camped in three different spots during our stay; next to the beautiful 17th century Børsen (Stock Exchange) building in central Copenhagen with its fantastic dragon spire, by the Carlsberg brewery visitors centre in the Vesterbro district around 2 kilometres from the station, and by the packed City Camp aire a short walk away from the centre. 

Carlsberg was founded in Copenhagen by J.C. Jacobsen in 1847 and his son Carl established one of the city's best museums in 1897. The Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek houses more than 10,000 works of art and offers free admission on the first Sunday of every month - a happy coincidence! 

Denmark is also the home of Lego and although we didn't visit Legoland during our stay in the country we did pop into one of Copenhagen's many Lego shops to see the great models and the 'build your own minifigure' stand!

During our stay we also took a boat tour around some of the main sights, and enjoyed a couple of evening walks to take in the city lights. Seeing the city centre amusement park, the Tivoli Gardens, lit up at night is particularly special.   

So that was it - another capital city and a new personal favourite, done!

Copenhagen, we will most definitely be back!

Gretta Garbo, Geece, and Shaggy from Scooby Doo!

19th - 29th July 2011

Taking the ferry from Turku in Finland to Stockholm, the Swedish capital, takes 13 hours.

Setting sail at 8:45am we were a little worried that Charlie wouldn’t be able to sit still for 13 hours.

We went prepared, packing an enormous packed lunch in one Bag for Life and Charlie’s bed in another! And the dog was good as gold in the end. As soon as we got settled somewhere we unrolled her duvet and she plonked herself down and watched the world go by.


There are a vast number of islands, islets, and skerries between Finland and Sweden. The ferry snakes its way through them for miles, picking its way through narrow channels, and only being out in open sea for a short time.


First impressions of Stockholm were pretty good, as we drove off the ferry and through the centre in glorious sunshine. It’s a city of islands, grand 19th century neo-classical architecture, and H&M!!


The camping spot for our 3 day visit was a 15 minute walk from the centre along the waterfront – perfect! Stockholm is set on 14 islands so you’re never far from the water, which suited Charlie just fine - although she gave some of the locals a wide berth...


We started exploring in Gamla Stan, the old town, a warren of narrow medieval streets.


The Royal Palace isn’t the most attractive of buildings, but we had a wander around and stopped to watch the changing of the guard.


Sweden’s monarchs are married and crowned at Stockholm’s cathedral, the ‘Storkyrkan’. It’s a surprisingly small place but it houses a fantastic 15th century sculpture of St George and the Dragon, and a very striking silver and black altarpiece.


We visited both of the city’s markets on our travels, and also passed the PUB department store where Gretta Garbo once sold hats!!


Being children of the 80s, we both remember watching the Mary Rose being raised from the depths of Portsmouth Harbour on Blue Peter, so we were keen to visit the Vasamuseet.

The Vasa is a ship which lay in the mud of Stockholm harbour for over 350 years after it sank on its maiden voyage. It didn’t sink in battle; it was just badly designed and rolled over just a few minutes after being launched back in 1628. That’s IKEA flat packs for you!

The building is pretty impressive, but the ship itself is an amazing site and several tiers within the building allow you to get a close up view of different sections of the ship.




The visit inspired us to watch the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ films. What a mistake!! We gave up half way through the second one after we both fell asleep.


Ask yourself what Sweden is famous for and one of the things you’ll surely think of, after IKEA, is ABBA. So you can imagine our disappointment to find that the ABBA museum still hadn’t opened – despite it being raved about it in our guide book!

We could have taken ourselves on one of the ABBA walking tours, but we’re not interested enough to see where different album covers were photographed, and where Benny once had his hair cut in 1978!!

The tourist office also offers walking tours based on Stig Larson’s ‘Millenium’ trilogy, and many of the place names were certainly familiar to us after reading the books last year.


The Kaknas TV Tower was a 5 minute walk from where we were parked.


One of the highest buildings in Scandinavia, a trip to the top is certainly one of the city’s highlights. We won’t forget seeing the great views as a number of hot air balloons drifted across the city as the sun went down.



Stockholm is a visually stunning city, but it felt a little stayed to us and as though it really needed to let its hair down. But perhaps we didn't spend enough time there 'letting our hair down'!

Our brief trip to Upsalla was perhaps a little ill advised - an hour’s drive in the wrong direction to see a fairly plain town with quite a nice cathedral.


The following week was spent travelling down Sweden’s east coast, and across to Malmo.

There are some lovely towns along this stretch of coast but Kalmar, with its impressive castle and historic centre was certainly a highlight.


The town is particularly significant in Scandinavian history because of the Kalmar Union, a treaty from 1397 which brought Sweden, Norway and Denmark together as a single Kingdom which lasted for over 300 years.



We had a couple of cheap haircuts in picturesque Karlskrona; a good job as Alex was starting to resemble Shaggy from Scooby Doo!



One of the town's best known attractions is the Rosenbom; you raise the beggar’s hat to put a coin in - steps are provided for the vertically challenged!


We had a quick stop at the university town of Lund to look at the magnificent twelfth century Romanesque cathedral, with its astonomical clock.




Our last day in Sweden was spent in Malmo, on a very wet and dreary day. The city is nice enough, but nowhere looks stunning on a day like that does it.


Malmo gave us our last experience of a government run off-licence – it seemed to be the most popular place in town!

The city’s most interesting new building is the Turning Torso skyscraper. The highest building in Scandinavia, it consists of 9 stacked cubes that twist 90° from the base to the top.


It’s fair to say that we didn’t really warm to Sweden in the end. And we’ve found wild camping really quite difficult at times, despite there being some stunning stretches of coast that would be a dream in many other countries.

Another reason for our less than positive experience in Sweden is probably the timing. We’re approaching the end of our 18 month ‘holiday of a lifetime’. Our ferry back to the UK is booked for early September; we’ve been working on our CVs and keeping an eye out for jobs; and we’re having to think about the practicalities of settling back into a ‘normal life’ again.

But let’s not think about that - we’ve still got over a month to go!


In the next episode we enjoy ‘wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen’, and Charlie scares the life out of us by knocking at death’s door... and getting halfway through it....

View July 19th - 28th 2011 in a larger map