Day 5: Day trip to west coast

5th August, Saeby

The day started with the fantastic Gronbech breakfast of danish bread, cheese and cold cuts.

Danish Pastry

Today we are supposed to go on a day trip to the west coast of Denmark. We started our journey around 10:30 AM after dropping the kids at Hanna's place. The day was bright and sunny and we had a nice drive chatting over things. The wind turbines look fascinating. I was told that Denmark only produces 20% of its electricity by wind and is trying to increase this. The citizens have an option of buying power from different operators. Also they can choose to pay extra and use wind power produced locally rather than what is imported from Norway. You can also have your own small wind turbine just to power your house, anything extra can be sold to  the grid.

Our first stop was in the rock and roll museum at Blokhus which was also hosting the annual sand and wood sculpture show. It was real nice to see how amazing sculptures has been carved out of sand by the artists.

The sand sculptures

We moved ahead to reach the west coast which around 15 Kms of white sand beach next to the north sea and the best thing was, you can drive on it all the way. It was a nice beach with some good waves for surfing. The beach was dotted with people having a good time camping, kiting, sunbathing and relaxing next to their camper vans. The beach also has a lot of summer houses nearby which can be rented or you can opt to rent a few cabins just on the beach. We drove around 10 kms on the beach and then came on the road towards Longstrup, a nice lazy town where we plan to have our late lunch.

Longstrup Beach

We have somehow fallen in love with the small, cosy and colourful scandinavian countryside houses. Longstrup was dotted with them, with beautiful flowering plants all around. Another fascinating thing to see is locals keep things which they wanna sell viz. vegetables from their kitchen garden, some shells they found while fishing or anything else and tag the price on it along with a box for people to drop the money. People here are so honest, they drop the money in the box and take what they want, no one need to sit around selling. Back home, i am sure it would have been very very different.

We settled on a place called Mama Rosa and ordered for some danish open sandwiches(79 DKK) and a platter(98 DKK) for me and John. Lotte settled for some vegetarian dish. Due to the flu which got me from the day before, i abstiened  from having any beer. My platter consisted of danish meatball, deep friend fish fillet, a heap of fresh shrimps and some lovely pickled herring (which i am so much in love with by now). We were approached by the gorgeous stewardess who told me in broken hindi how much she loved Bollywood movies and come to india some day. She apparently have seen a few of Pritha's brother's movies too. It amazes me every time how Bollywood connects everyone.

At Mamma Rosa

We started our way back to cut through straight towards saeby. On our way back we made a stopover at Frederikshavn harbour to purchase our ferry tickets for Goteborg, the next day. (170 DKK each).

We reached home around 5:30 PM, after picking up the kids from Hanna and chris's house. We did spend some time with them over some very nice wine. I must say the danes are a very warm and hospitable community.

We decided to take an hours power nap before we leave for dinner later in the evening. Me and Pritha, along with Lotte,john, the kids and sophie left for our planned dinner at the harbour at Jensen's  Fiskerestaurant. I have been here before and hence know how good it is. Jensen's is always full and hence a prior booking can be handy. The spread is mainly variety of fishes and lobsters/ crayfish. After a hearty meal we took a well deserved walk on the harbour. The weather was warm and sunny, perfect day. We walked past "The Lady from the sea", which is situated on the harbour. After a long stroll on the trails around the creek and tasting some fabulous softies ( called soft ice here), we headed towards the hill top from where you get a very good view of the sea, but it was quiet dark by the time we reached there.

At Jensen's

So we reached home and somehow got into the sports mode. So after a few rounds of table tennis and air hockey, we retired to our beds. A fantastic trip to Denmark comes to an end. We had spend around 2500 DKK apart from what we had spend on accommodation in Copenhagen.