Posts In The “Destinations” Category
Denmark’s National Maritime Museum is built on the site of an old dry-dock in Helsingor. One of the stipulations of the design competition was that the museum be contained entirely in the dry-dock and not extend above street level. Where most designs proposed building the museum inside the dry-dock with a roof on top, the…
Frederiksborg Castle, a Dutch-Renaissance palace built in the early 1600s as a residence for Christian IV, is one of the most impressive buildings in Denmark with over 80 rooms full of paintings, tapestry, furniture and spectacular gilded decor. After a fire in 1859 destroyed much of the castle, Carlsberg brewery founder J. C. Jacobsen was…
The tiny island of Anholt is 7 miles (11 km) long and about 4 miles (6.4 km) wide and is 80% desert, making up the largest desert in Northern Europe. Just to the west is the 400-megawatt Anholt Offshore Wind Farm, the largest in Denmark and one of the largest wind farms in the world….
Laeso, a Danish island in the Kattegat, is famous for its seaweed houses that are found nowhere else in the world. Seaweed is an excellent insulator and the islanders began using it for roofing since Laeso became deforested by the 1600s. The seaweed roofs can last up to 400 years, but many are in a…
Denmark’s peninsula of Jutland is bordered on one side by the Skagerakk in the North Sea and on the other by the Kattegat in the Baltic Sea. At Grenen, a long spit off the northern tip of Jutland, you can walk out the end and stand with one foot in each body of water. Excellent…
Skagen, at the northern tip of Denmark, is the largest fishing port in the country and lands one quarter of the total Danish catch by value. It is the home port for the Ceton, the pelagic trawler that we toured in Donso, and one of the reasons we wanted to visit was to see some…
On our final day in Sweden, we returned to Smogen, this time anchoring off the east shore. With the North Sea directly to our west, and after watching the waves crashing into the shore there during the big westerly winds a couple of weeks earlier, it felt a little crazy to be anchored there. But…
The Koster Islands are known for their extensive and beautiful trail network. On our fourth day in Kosterhavet National Park, we took care of a few boat projects, then ran the tender to North Koster Island to walk the trails and stop for a drink on the patio of eclectic waterfront restaurant Strandkanten. Below are…
The lighthouse station on Ursholmen, in Sweden’s Kosterhavet National Park, was opened in 1891. Twin towers were used to distinguish this station from others. The second light was disabled in the 1930s, when technology had advanced to produce characteristic flashing patterns with a single light, but the tower still remains. Ursholmen also is known for…
We’d received many, many recommendations to visit Kosterhavet National Park, just south of the Swedish border with Norway. We finally arrived on a sunny September Saturday in time for the annual Koster Swimrun. The event, held annually in September, is a roughly 19-mile (30 km) race around the Koster Islands 3 miles (5 km) of…
The picturesque town of Fjallbacka is a popular and crowded summer destination. It is famous as being the summer home for Swedish film star Ingrid Bergman and also the setting for Swedish crime writer Camilla Lackberg’s “Fjallbackamorden” series of murder-mysteries. Strung along the water below steep cliffs, Fjallbacka is also known for its natural beauty,…
Vaderoarna (the Weather Islands) were classified as a nature reserve in 2012 and have one of Sweden’s warmest, but windiest, climates. A lighthouse was first installed there 1867, and a pilots’ station in 1754. Today the beautiful islands are a popular tourist destination, particularly the current pilots’ lookout, built in the 1930s. We initially planned…
Nordens Ark, on the Swedish west coast, is a private, non-profit foundation focusing on conservation, rearing, and research of endangered animals. Their zoo houses roughly 80 animal species from around the world, ranging from insects, frogs and birds to reindeer, wolves and cats large and small. From Smogen, we travelled to the head of Abyfjorden…
Smogen is right on the edge of the Skagerrak and exposed to the North Sea. So when a big westerly storm rolls in, exciting seas can develop and the storm surge can raise the water level in the harbour several feet. We spent two more nights at Smogen, touring the area by tender and on…
Smogen, the “Island of Light”, ends its summer season with an art light festival that last year drew 30,000 attendees. While most coastal Swedish towns have rolled up the carpet for the year by mid-August, Smogen is going strong until the mid-September festival. All the restaurants are still open and the docks and streets are…
The 19th-century seaside resort Lysekil sits at the mouth of Gullmarsfjorden, a 15-mile-long (25 km) fjord that in 1983 was designated as Sweden’s first marine conservation area. The aquarium at Lysekil features sea life from Gullmarsfjorden that bears a remarkable resemblance to those we’ve seen when diving in the Pacific Northwest, with the Wolf Eels…
Karingon, a small and beautiful island along the Swedish West Coast, has one of the most active Sea Rescue Society station in Sweden. The Karingon Sea Rescue Society, founded in 1920, has 36 volunteers and performs 400-500 missions each year. Averaging more than one mission a day, the busiest days in the summer must be…
Pilane Sculpture Park, set in a farmer’s field in the middle of the Swedish island of Tjorn, was voted among the top ten in Europe by the British newspaper The Guardian. The clear star at Pilane is Anna by Jaume Plensa. The huge head of a woman is visible from sea—we could see it from…