Sweden day trip

Our last day in Copenhagen and the weather was nice and sunny, but bitterly cold with a very crisp wind. It was definitely the coldest day this week yet. I had spent the last six days touring around Copenhagen and while Z didn't exactly have the same amount of time, we decided that we would spend our last day with a day trip to Sweden. It's rather easy getting around once in Europe. We had heard about a bus tour through viatour that would take us on a day trip to Sweden. We read good reviews about it on tripadvisor, but we decided to wait on booking until Friday night. When we went to book the tour, the website said it was no longer available. We were both disappointed thinking that we had missed out. But Z was determined to find a way to get us on this tour without doing it as a "walk-on" in the morning. He called the viatour and they gave him the name and number of the tour operator. A little google searching later and Z found the tour operator's direct website and was off figuring out how to book the tour only 10 hours before the tour was to leave. He's so resourceful...definitely makes travelling a lot easier for me. :)

The tour was set to leave at 9:45am and lucky for us, was leaving right outside our hotel. The tour is a partially narrated bus tour that lasts until 5:45pm. We drove along the coast of Denmark to the ferry which would take us into Sweden. We're really glad we took this tour because otherwise we would not have seen the beautiful coastline and some of the more well-to-do parts of Denmark where, we are told a lot of the football players live in their villas. We didn't see anyone doing the Viking swim today, but learned that the Viking swim entails people swimming naked in the Baltic Sea. It's probably a good thing that we didn't see anyone out there today because with this cold weather I'm sure they would suffer hypothermia. We arrived at the ferry terminal and were told we'd get to see Kronborg Castle, also known as Hamlet's Castle, as we left the dock. This magnificent castle was built in 1574-84 and is used every year as the setting for the performance of Hamlet in the courtyard.

The ferry crossing was only 20 minutes. The ferry itself was your typical ferry, though much smaller in size when compared to our ferries back home. There was no immigration to go through because both Denmark and Sweden are part of the EU, which allows for entry into member countries without having to produce a password. This actually reminds me of our entry into Denmark. Denmark has one of the easiest entries I've ever experienced. We arrived at the airport and proceeded to passport control and were greeted by an officer who just said "hi", looked at each of us, scanned and stamped our passports and we were on our way. No questions about why we were in Denmark and how long we planned to stay, etc. Piece of cake.

Now back to Sweden...We arrived in Helsingborg a city founded in 1085. Helsingborg is a major regional centre for trade, transport and business. The city in its modern day is becoming a centre for many IT company headquarters. We saw the Sony Ericsson campus. From Helsingborg we drove through the countryside to Lund; total drive was about 50 minutes.

Lund is believed to have been founded in 990 when the Scanian Islands belonged to Denmark. At the city centre you find the towering Lund Cathedral which was built 1090-1145. There was a choral festival going while during our short visit and we weren't really supposed to enter the cathedral, but we entered through a side door and looked around anyway. No one kicked us out and we got to enjoy the beauty of the inside all the while listening to beautiful a cappella singing. They sounded so glorious. Inside the cathedral is an astronomical clock made around 1424. Lund is now known as somewhat of a university town because of Lund University which is the largest university in Sweden. We had lunch here before getting back on the bus for the trip to Malmo.

The drive to Malmo was about twenty minutes. Malmo is the third largest city in Sweden and I felt there was a little more to see and do when we were dropped off here compared to Lund. It just felt much larger. Here was got to see some more amazing architecture, including the Turning Torso - a 54 storey, 190 metre skyscraper where you could rent an apartment on the 52nd floor for only $11,000USD per month. This structure is incredible (I'll post a picture of it in a separate post). We enjoyed our time here by walking around the city centre and along the pedestrian streets. If Europe does anything extremely well, it's the pedestrian streets. They are so open and full of shops, cafes and restaurants. The restaurants all have outdoor seating. In Copenhagen and in Malmo the outdoor seating at the restaurants also came with blankets at this time of the year. People still love sitting outside to people watch and enjoy their time, but the weather is very cold so blankets and heaters are a must.

Malmo is the entry point from Copenhagen via the Oresund Bridge. This engineering wonder was constructed as a joint effort between Sweden and Denmark and opened in 2000. The bridge spans 7,845 metres, has three cable-stayed sections and partway turns into a tunnel under the Drogden Strait. It's a toll bridge and costs about $275 Kroener to cross. There are also railway tracks along the crossing. Thankfully the toll was already included in our tour. The trip across the bridge/tunnel took maybe about 10 minutes. The countries' border is partway across the bridge. Partway across the bridge you can also see a bunch of wind turbines in the middle of the strait. We learned on this tour that 20% of Denmark's electricity is produced by wind turbines.

A lot of Danes live in Malmo and commute each day over this bridge. The cost of living and taxes are that much cheaper in Sweden to make it worthwhile. We even noticed that the prices are much higher in Denmark than what we're accustomed to. Restaurants charge a 25% tax (doesn't the 12% HST sound good now?) and prices in general we found to be about 20-30% higher.

We got back to Copenhagen around 5:45pm and then rested up a little before heading out for our last dinner there. We chose a more traditional Danish restaurant and quite enjoyed the food. One of the staple foods in Denmark is the potatoe. It seems to come with almost every meal in some fashion. The pastries here are also amazing and I would have eaten more of them if I wasn't trying to watch my weight before the wedding.