We thought we’d take a simple trip to Copenhagen Tuesday. Well, not so simple. It turned into a rather long, but interesting day.

We headed over the Öresund Bridge between Malmö and Copenhagen. I wish I could have taken pictures while driving. It is an impressive 10-mile bridge ending on a man-made island in the middle of the straight, where the road enters a 2.5 mile-long underwater tunnel. From the bridge, you can see Sweden’s Lillgrund Wind Farm to the left and Denmark’s Middlegrunden Wind Farm to the right. (Again, I couldn’t take pictures, but you can click on the names above to link to web sites if you’re interested.)

I hadn’t really thought about this being a toll bridge, but I wasn’t surprised when we came upon the toll plaza. What did surprise me was the toll–495 SEK (about $73)! Each way! Our original plan was to stay 2 days in Malmo and then move on to Copenhagen, but we changed plans because we decided it would be easier to stay in Malmo and make a day trip to Copenhagen. Although I still think the change in plans was for the best, we wound up not only with the cost of the tolls, but a surcharge on the rental car for dropping it off outside Sweden.

Once in Copenhagen, we made a dry run to the airport to make sure getting there would go smoothly on Thursday. Then we made our way through town (and more construction) to the Rosenborg Castle, where the Danish crown jewels are displayed, along with examples of decor from several generations of royalty. We found the castle area reasonably well, but it wasn’t visible from the car while negotiating traffic, and I think the view of the entrance was blocked by tour busses. At any rate, there was no place to park and we had to drive around a large block to find a place to park.

As we entered what we thought were the castle grounds, we came upon a spectacular greenhouse and the grounds were a lush botanical garden. We didn’t know where we were going but finally learned that we had to walk some distance to the castle.

As we walked through the botanical garden, we didn’t realize that we were walking the lonnnng way to the castle. After asking directions of several people, we finally made it there, but we must have walked at least an hour up and down hills through the garden.

When we finally reached the entrance to the castle, we learned that a lot of stairs were involved, and there are no elevators, so Janie would have to wait outside. She wanted me to be able to see it though, so she sat while I went through it. Fortunately, photography was allowed, so I was able to share the experience with her, and with you. Here are some examples of royal crowns and jewels–everything you might imagine!

Here are thrones in the throne room. I will have more photos when I get home and collect them all in an album page.

It was a hot day, and we knew we had a long walk back to the car. I offered to go get it and pick Janie up, but she felt that she could do the walk. She did, too! We were both hot and tired when we got back to the car, and since the castle experience had taken much longer than we expected, we decided to skip going to an old church as originally planned. Instead, we would try to find the old windmill that we had seen on our original trip into Malmö.

I thought it would be a simple matter of putting the city of Gothenburg into the GPS and the GPS would take us back over the bridge, through Malmo and onto the road on which we had come from Gothenburg. The theory was that we would then see the old windmill and get off the highway to go find it. It didn’t exactly work out that way.

A disadvantage of using a GPS as opposed to a map is that you don’t necessarily see the big picture of the route the GPS has planned for you. We experienced that once before in Ireland (as Leslie and Janie will recall), and it happened again. I did not realize that there are two ways to get back to Sweden–one over the bridge, and one by ferry. The bridge is the shortest way to Malmo, but the ferry is the shortest way to Gothenburg, which I had used as our destination in the GPS. So the GPS took us way out of our way. Not being familiar with the surroundings, and not being able to see the big picture, we didn’t realize it until we got most of the way to the ferry. By then it was too late to turn back, and we wound up taking the ferry from Helsingør, Denmark to Helsingborg, Sweden, about 55 km from Malmö. This is why part of my title is “Adventures in Driving.” The ferry was about the same cost as the bridge. (Price fixing if you ask me!) We just made the ferry. I think we were the 2nd to last car allowed on.

We had lunch in Helsingborg. By now it was 3:30 PM. We decided to head for Malmö, and if we saw the old windmill, we would get off the freeway and go see it. If we didn’t see it, well it must have been farther away than I thought.  As we drove, we came to an interesting-looking old church that we had passed on our first trip into Malmö. We decided to get off the freeway and go find it, and I took a few pictures.

Once we got back on the freeway, we drove a long way and were quite close to Malmö. I had given up on the windmill, because we were too close to the city. I assumed that it must be farther away than Helsingborg, but all of a sudden, there it was. We had just passed an exit, so I had to go quite a ways to get off. Then I had to drive by dead reckoning to try to find it. The GPS would be no help because I didn’t know what coordinates to put it, and I didn’t know the name of the windmill. We drove a long way, and I was again about to give up, when I stopped to ask. (I know! I’m not supposed to do that, but I was in another country!) The clerk in a garden store was not familiar with it, but a customer outside knew of it and was very helpful in giving me the name (Kronetorps Mölla) and the general location. It was still a crap shoot and dead reckoning, but then . . . a Swedish miracle! There was a sign pointing to Kronetorps Mölla! Just 3 km. So off we went, and we found it!

Finding a big windmill in the middle of farming country is a little like finding a giant hot air balloon once it comes down low–it is amazing how it can disappear! Janie (the ace balloon chaser) was the first to spot it, and we managed to find the little driveway onto the property. It was closed of course. By now it was about 6:30 PM, but I was able to walk around and get some photos.

Finally, we headed home after a very long day! Adventures in driving! I really appreciated Janie’s patience because I got to see several interesting landmarks, in spite of dragging her all over the place.

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