This guy was pumping beer directly into storage tanks in the basement of a bar. He assured me it wasn't Heineken, though.
It was about 10 AM, and the bicycles were out in force.
Stockholm has very well-defined bike routes, including dedicated travel and turn lanes, traffic lights, etc., and cyclists seem to follow them religiously.
We tried to walk down to the north side of Gamla Stan to see the other set of locks (that we didn't go through on the boat tour yesterday), but discovered a giant construction site instead. "Nya Slussen" means "New Locks".
As we meandered back into the heart of Gamla Stan, we did a bit of shop-browsing. I was thinking about getting a new bathing suit, but felt it was a little too short.
Sabrina's vote was for the avocado print.
I couldn't find it again without checking the GPS tag of this photo, but we ended up in a charming little square only a few blocks from the apartment.
As we returned to the apartment, we noticed that the restaurant we ate at a few nights ago had an unusual sign. Not sure how I missed that the previous 5 or 6 times I walked past it.
Just after 11 AM, we schlepped our luggage down to the street, walked a few blocks to a car-navigable area, and hailed an Uber to the train station.
We had almost an hour to figure out where the train was, acquire adequate provisions to survive a 5- or 6-hour train ride, and peruse a few shops.
The ride through southeast Sweden was fairly calm and quiet. Most of the way, the scenery was flat expanses of farmland, lake country, and forest.
An hour or two into the trip, there was an announcement in 3 diferent languages stating that passengers continuing all the way to Copenhagen would have to change trains in... some city name we couldn't understand, and that if we had any questions, we could ask any staff member.
I found the woman who had made the announcement, and asked where and why we were changing trains. She explained that we had to get off in Malmö, which was "many hours away" and change trains (but stay in the same seats, in the same car) because "this one doesn't meet technical requirements to cross the bridge into Copenhagen".
I still have no idea what that means, but it wasn't especially reassuring.
Halfway through the train ride, the weather turned gray and wet. As the forecast in Copenhagen was cloudy and cold(ish), we expected this would happen at some point.
True to their threat, SJ rail made Malmö the end of the line; we had to make a mad dash through the impatient mob that had formed (we were about 15 minutes behind schedule) and get back on a different train, in front of the original one on the same track.
Not long after leaving Malmö, we crossed over the Øresund bridge (and tunnel) into Copenhagen.
When we got off the train around 6 PM, it was cloudy, windy, and cold. The train inexplicably dropped us off outside, about a block from the central station. Not a great first impression, Copenhagen.
We found our way inside and took the S-tog a few stops towards the center of the city. The Airbnb apartment is about a mile from the central train station.
To us, it felt like there were a lot of bikes in Stockholm, but we had no idea what a real bike-friendly city looked like until today. According to Wikipedia, there are more bicycles than people in Copenhagen.
The instructions for getting the key to the apartment involved locating a lockbox in a 7-Eleven, sort of between the S-tog station and the apartment, so we hiked through the pedestrian zone in search of this convenience store.
None of us could send an SMS with the access code, so I installed the Sharebox app on my phone and was able to retrieve the key.
From there, it was a 5- or 10-minute walk, and up a few flights of stairs, to deposit our luggage and start thinking about dinner.
On the way to dinner, we made a pit stop at the Round Tower, because we hadn't met our step quota for the day.
They didn't have (or were out of) pamphlets in English, so we had no explanation for the spiral ramp access. According to the Wikipedia page, "This design was chosen to allow a horse and carriage to reach the library, moving books in and out of the library as well as transporting heavy and sensitive instruments to the observatory."
... I would love to see a horse and carriage in action on this ramp.
The view from the top was decent, even with the mediocre weather and the excessive fence around the top.
The very top of the tower is an observatory.
After spiraling back to terra firma, we explored the nearby restaurant options.
Inside Boulebar Nørregade, we found people playing Pétanque. No, I didn't know that's what it was. There were signs, and the host explained it to us as part of his sales pitch. We didn't stay for dinner, but it was tempting.
We were looking for something quieter, so we ended up at a tiny Italian place in the lower level of some building near the apartment. I can't even find it on Google maps to figure out what it was called.
After dinner, around 9 PM, the weather was starting to clear up and we got a hint of sunset on the short walk back to the Airbnb. We've now gone far enough south that the sun sets around 9:30 PM.
We stopped at the 7-Eleven very close to the apartment to pick up a few essentials, like cookies.
I don't think I mentioned it, but there are 7-Eleven locations all over Scandinavia. At least, they're all over Oslo, Stockholm, and Copenhagen. They have an excellent selection of baked goods, too.
Wikipedia claims there are 8 locations just in the Copenhagen central train station.
Tomorrow, we're going to stroll around this city and see what there is to see. The weather forecast is promising, and a bit cooler. (I consider that an improvement.)
No comments:
Post a Comment