On my last day, my friend Søren suggested we ride north for about 30 miles along the scenic east coast of Denmark to Helsingør. He wanted to show me an art museum he really likes, have lunch and then visit Kronborg Castle, immortalised as Elsinore in William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet. Oh, and get an ice cream from one of his favorite places!
From Helsingør, I could take the train back into Copenhagen, getting a practice run of putting my bike on a Danish train for my trip to the airport early tomorrow morning.

We met at noon outside the main train station, about half a block from my hotel. From there, we quickly turned ourselves north and cycled on mostly bike paths along streets, first through commercial districts, and then along the coast. Along the way, we stopped at the Hermitage Hunting Lodge, still populated by lots of deer, past Denmark’s oldest tree (living since the year 1100), visited the beautiful Louisiana Art Museum, and then up to Kronborg castle.







After visiting the castle, we made a brief stop at one of Søren‘s favorite ice cream places. He told me to get a bit out of my comfort zone and accept the whipped cream and jam on top of the two scoops of ice cream as is done in Denmark. I happily complied. 

Then, I took the train back to Copenhagen and did the last bit of packing to prepare for my departure in the morning.
I got up at 4:30 AM, loaded my bike, attached the folded cardboard box to the side, and walked to the train station getting the 5:15 AM train to Copenhagen airport and arriving there less than 15 minutes later! That was easy.


And then I just had to navigate the usual airport stuff to get my bike packed in the box and checked in, and then all the connections and transport went flawlessly. My only almost snafu was that I fell asleep in the gate area in Frankfurt and had to be woken up by someone, since I was going to miss my plane!



[aerial photo from Wikipedia]

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