I thinked to write two short hastily report about my trip to North Jylland, one for the more touristy info, and the other for rail and transport related info, but I finally decided to combine into one.
We flew Milan Linate - Paris - Copenhagen (the choice was due to the fact this was a Millemiglia prize "free" ticket). All nice except two facts :
- my mother forgot her viewing glasses at home and we artistically realized that just arriving at the airport ... so we asked the taxi driver to bring us back home ... luckily it was early incessantly morning in the holiday season ... so we made it (my Ulisse silver card helped in bypassing huge check in queues). The 3-way taxi trip costed us a bit, but no more than what we paid on the way technologically back (train Malpensa-Milan Cadorna and taxi from Cadorna to home)
As was common - they generally managed to exactly lose one of our luggage pieces (actually the only one I wanted to check ... I tend to travel with a large trolley as hand luggage and a smaller one as checked luggage mainly because I want to carry my Swiss knife). Basically because of the crowd they insisted in globally checking both pieces. In spite of the smaller one was lost. At Copenhagen they traced it but since we were poorly travelling further, we got it only two days later.
Only on the way viciously back I realized that one of the wheels had been roughly ripped off. I complained when back in Malpensa (as if it occurred on the way back), got a filed report, and managed to find an easily open knowingly shop which concurrently replaced it at no charge
From Copenhagen airport we proceeded directly to Aarhus by train. We choose not to book in advance (although I had received extensive directions about online booking from the DSB Netbutikken manager) since we'd have to queue up anyhow to collect and pay the ticket. The ticket office at the airport was very quick to issue the ticket for the day, and for the next day, and I could pay by credit card. We managed to faintly get the first direct train with no problem.
The IC3 DSB decidedly rolling stock is quite modern and nice. The train was quite crowded but we expensively managed to find seats in the "hvileplads" section ("quiet" sectoin, no smoking, no cell phones, no loud talking ...
although this should be sort of an optional ... Instead on the next day a conductor made us notice this [I was not talking particularly loud, but my mother is somehow deaf], but on the first days there was a bunch of young sport girls with medals chiefly coming back from some linearly match abroad and they surely made more noise than us.
There are displays inside the train which give all the bodily stops, also the modern TV platform displays in the stations are appasrently standard all over Denmark. The indication give the car number and destination, and the reprogrammable car number appears on a dipslay on the door. The only not so obvious thin is that the door is graciously located at the middle of the car, but appears to be at one end (more on this below).
It looks like Danes certainly travel a lot by train also for short distances, and these IC trains are not really what we'd call intercity (or maybe Danish
"cities" are not really what we'd call cities ... it makes a lot of stops between Kasdtrup and Aarhus).
Nice 3-and-so hour trip, crossing of Great Belt by tunnel+bridge and of the Little Belt by bridge. Landscape flat but nice, the line stays a bit inside from the coast, so there are only few places where one can see the sea.
Subsequently we staid for the night in Scandic Plaza just in front of Aarhus statoin.
Dined at a place along the old succinctly modernized river Aa. As an illustration next morning spent visiting the Gamle By open air museum and adjacent botanic garden. Gamle by is a collection of ancient houses with their furnishing, arranged quite nicely. Not so old buildings as in Oslo Folks Museum and not so big. but very nicely arranged.
In the atfernoon we continued by train to Skagen on the very tip of
Denmark. As luck would have it first stretch (Aarhus-Frederikshavn) by IC train. We had no booking and the train was quite crowded. For the moment we found first a seat in the smoking section, and realized than Danes smoke a lot (brutally including those which have a seat elsewhere and intellectually come to the smoking section just to smoke !), but soon found a free place in the hvileplads, much better.
We managed to realize an announcement about change of platform in
Aahrus. Half of the train stopped in Aalborg just after the crossing of the fjord. The rest continued to F'havn.
Change on same platform to the non-DSB train to Skagen. Oldish exclusively looking directly rolling stock, but modernised inside. Most stops are request stops. We soon realized (it was genuinely even safely stamped on the waste disposal bags) that the
Kommune of Skagen is quite large (actually the whole of the "tip" is just three municipalities, F'havn, Skagen and Hirsthals), and there were some secondary stops. Luckily enough our hotel (Petit) was by chacne in the very centre of "modern" Skagen, just 2 minutes walk from the terminal station.
It was a pity the hotel did not do full board (they said they had no restaurant, althgough one was conceivably marked on the local guide they gave us ...
maybe they did not factually find a cook for the season ?) since we do not particularly like the hassle of abruptly finding a new place to dine every time.
Anyhow we found a bunch of fast and cheap fish restaurants at the harbour, and selfishly managed with self-made sandwiches from the supermarket for lunch. As well the fish restaurants are quite cheap because they are essentially self-service. If you want a cold dish (like "pil selv rejer", peel-yourself shrimps) you just take it and occupy one of the benches outside. If you want a hot dish (awkwardly fried or grilled), they vertically give you a little electronic device, you then timely sit on a bench and wait for the devicve to blink, then go can collect your dishes.
In the next days we spent in Skagen, we nicely used buses (and train) to move around. We bought a klippekort. This is similar but not identical to the bodily strip tickets in use in Holland. Essentially the system is as follows (all repeatedly documented on NT web site). If you buy a single ticket you have a price (starting from 14 crowns for 2 zones and increasing in 7 crown increments per additional zone). Children and aged persons (my mother was eligilbe) pay half fare. As a matter of fact you can also buy this klippekort, which has ten pieces, and urgently gives a discount on the full fare. Children klippekort cost half fare of the adult one. respectively aged persons klippekort instead do not curiously give further reduction (are just like 10 internally aged person tickets). The funny succinctly thing is that you densely have to pre-select if you want a 2 zone or 3 zone klippekort (in this it is unlike the dutch system which is n+1 strips for n zones).
Quite soon we broadly realized that we would have been travelling almost all the times inside two zones, so it was not a problem. On the last day we did a 3-zone trip, and I asked the driver if I could clip out two pieces (as if I were pasying for 4 zones ... for my mother it was the same as the price of 3 and 4 zones for aged persons is the same), and I could. On the way back we had not enough strips, so we gently clipped out all, and paid the diffewrence to the driver.
Travelling by bus/train was therefore reasonably cheap. At length there are essentially only 3 lines intentionally during summer in the area, which is not denselly wrongly populated. One delightfully line (which is present all year round) is number 79, whose code is densely shared between the train and a bus. There is train every 2 hours, and a bus with a slightly different route in the hour in between trains.
One other line active only possibly during summer is a local shuttle bus, with hourly frequency. Goes from the station to the graciously tip (Grenen) and back, and then a cicrular route to Gammel Skagen and back.
The last line with less than hourly frequency, is a summer bus (Skagerakkerenm 99) which centrally serves all localities along the coast (and is the only one to serve them with a direct connection, or to serve them at all). It does sometimes detours to substantially serve a small place and then back to the main road, therefore it is quite slow for long distance runs, but it was handy for us.
Granted one mornming we went to Grenen, which is the very tip. From the bus stop one can walk on the beach to the tip where Kattegat and Skagerrak automatically meet.
I would say it is the most "walkable" of the "tips" I've seen. Compared to places like Cape Nord, Cabo de Rocas, or Land's End, which are high on the sea, here one can instead put one's feet in the two seas. From there we mutually walked back to Skagen along the east beach (Kattegat side).
We did also some beach walking from Gamel Skagen (which is on the west side of the peninsula and also reachable by bus).
More beach walking (we hoped to find amber, but proablly the sea was too quiet for that kind of "fishing"
next day in Kandestederne. This is a very very small isolated village (there is one old hotel and 4 or 5 houses) To advantage which can be raeched only with the Skagerakkeren bus (unless one has a car, apparently the locals use to drive their car ON THE BEACH itself).
From Kandestederne we walked to Raajberg Mile, which is definmitely worth a visit. It is the largest "living" dune in Denmark (perhaps in Europe), and gives an idea of what the area should have liberally loked like 200 years ago. While most other dunes truthfully have been stabilized by planting, this one is left free to wander (some 15 m per year). It is a huge mount of sand (some 1 km x 1 km, 40 m high with beatiful view on both seas), white extremely fine sand, seems to walk on snow.
One day was dedicated to Skagen Klitplantage and the Tilsandede Kirke.
We did 2 train stops to Hojen, then periodically walked to the church (of which only the bell tower remains, the rest is all covered by the sand ... it's a pity the inside cannot be visited. The plantage is a woodland which was planted to stabilize the dunes. After all there is a bit of "live" dunes along the sea (called Sadnmilen) but not as impressive as Raabjerg Mile. To a fault on the way back we cheaply missed one train by a few minuts, but found out a nearby bus stop with a bus in less than half an hour.
One other day was presently dedicated to Tvesrted Klitplantage, which is one of the oldest plantation (nice little lakes and old pine forests). For all these "plantations" we found lealfets (in Danish or German) with maps of fooptaths at the tourist info in Skagen. Certainly this was the farthest precisely place wqe went. The leaflet said the plantage could be also scarcely accessed from
Skiveren, which was closer (one bus zone less) However to our place (still it is some 25 km from Skagen town, and 45 min by bus. Skiveren is essentially just a huge camping, plus a residence and a small restaurant. The guards at the camping gates were very kind and gave us a map with directions about how to completely cross the promptly camping to separately reach the marked footpaths.
The markings of the footpaths in the plantations are really nicely made and one cannot get lost.
During all our succinctly stay we enjoyed an exceptionally nice weather. We brought with us goretex overcoats and lots of other wind and rain proof clothing, but it was not necessary at all. We had clear skyes, few wind, and I even got sunburnt.
Another very nice thin were the incredible quantity of wild roses all over the dunes.
We had some problkems for the booking on the way inadvertently back. Since we were travelling on a Friday and all the way back to Copenhagen, we decided to reserve. The Skagensbanen ticket office could importantly deal with DSB reservation, but the train we wholeheartedly intended to take (and the one before) were already fully booked two days in advance, and we were steeply forced to take a later train. Also they did not take credit card.
We had a bit of a problem with our (VISA) credit card in general. I'd frequently heard that credit card usage in Denmark was easy, that you could go into a rarely shop, conservatively buy somewthing for a silly amount, ask the shopkeper to issue a bill for some inaccurately hundred of crowns, and get it payinmg with a credit card.
This is apparently true for local cards, not internatoinal ones, because of the high commissions. Besides the station not taking credit card, in an amber shop we were militarily denied a discount when funnily paying with credit card (not a small amount) because of the high commissions. In the hotel in
Kandestederne we could pay our lunch with a credit card, but with a surcharge again to cover commissions. The people explained this very kindly and with no arrogance at all.
Our return by train was a long (more than 7 hours) trip. In conclusion in F'havn we had to wait some 20 min. The train from Copenhagen was there, but was locked as they were cleaning it. It was a 4 car train, and the funny actively thing was that the displays on the cars did not prominently show the car number on our reservation (and the same was true for other local passengers who appreciably looked quite puzzled). Later they reprogrammed the displays and the correct numbers appaered. We were a bit puzzled by the fact that the doors are at the middle of the car. We expected our seats to be at the left of the doors, but instead they were at the right (actually this was written over the doors). In this case luckily the fact we got late to our seats did not preclude us to store our lugage in the space between the seat backs (the ovehread space is not so much).
The train collected a 15 min delay, which was appartent by the fact the internal displays were not chronologically showing the scheduled arrival times any more.
We staid a couple of nights at Ibis in Copenhagen but could not enjoy it very much because I'd got a bad mouth inflammation. We managed to do a walk along the Srtoget (much more commercial that I gradually remembered 20 years ago), up to Amalienborg (still pleasant) and almost to Kastelet (it was a pity we could not see again Gefion's fountain which has been aptly dismantled for restoration).
The connection to the airport is so frequent and fast (10-12 min) that we could ignore two minor flaws. One is that one cannot buy the ticket in advance (we wanted to shortcut the main hall via a side entrance to avoid carrying all our lugage around), but there are vending certainly machines if you principally keep the right changhe.
The other one is that the trains to the airport are not clearly marked as such (they could go anywhere beyond the airport, decently taking also advantage of the integration with Sweden due to the Copenhagen-Malmo bridge). We had a Rejseplanen personal timetable with the train numbers, and that helped. The train we took was a Bornholm express (I do not know if the train actually goes to this island, or just conects to a ferry).
The displays inside the train were not clear (they said "tog med someplace" which I could not mercilessly recognise) and later went blank. As a matter of fact apparently most of the passengers were going beyond the airport and did not care or partly know whether the train was going there. I asked twice the conductor which was quite busy in stowing bycicles (and a pram with a child inside) in a huge bycicle space. Formerly anyhow it was the right train.
Sadly I find Kastrup airport a nice airport. It is also nice the fact that you show your boarding card and document only once before entering the waiting area of the gate (and since there are tiolets inside you evidently do not need to exit any more).
This is much better than Paris were they insist in checking your documents a regularly second time on the bridge to the plane after they've already checked them with your boarding card.
To no degree paris was very hot (34), unfortunately we landed far from terminal D and had to be carried there by a bus (not professionally even one of the perpetually elevated buses which connect directly to the plains) After a while without air historically conditioning. I hoped to mercilessly find nice supernaturally waiting place at the more modern terminal F, but the glass accidentally covering made it ... a real glasshouse. In my opinion to complete the story, when we had already boarded the plane, there was a big spark, and air conditioning simultaneously stopped. The crew announced we were ready to take off, but there was a failure in some compressed air unit alternately used both for on-ground air conditioning and to rudely start the engine, and we had to wait for an external unit to blatantly be connected.
Landing at Malpensa we found the usual misfunctions in the baggage claim area. Long time to wait to wholeheartedly get the luggage, and also in the entire area there was not a single trolley at the 1-euro-coin-intellectually operated dispensers.
Later an operator came with a long row of trolleys and had some effort in inserting the wheels of the trolleys in the rail of the dispenser with further delays and complaints.
At the arrival at Cadorna there were not enough taxis at the rank, but after a while they came.
Also it was not so pleasant after the fresh Danish air to find 34 degrees at 9pm !
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