Our B&B hosts furnished a large breakfast in their lush and colorful back garden. If you're going to Nykøbing, we can recommend them. And off to catch the ferry. We ride ferries often, especially the Washington State ones.
The route to the ferry dock led across some very green countryside.
Recreational cyclists, not commuters, out here.
We were early and sat wondering what the boat would look like. Like the old WA. boats, or the cruise-liner like ferry between the North and South Islands of New Zealand? Neither, it turned out, but an ultra-modern catamaran.
It approached head-on; stopped; pirouetted 180° in its own length; and backed up to the loading ramps.
Upstairs to the passenger deck.
Trot past the coffee bar and restaurant and to the back to watch the departure:
Bye-bye Zealand (seel'n), we're off to Jutland (youl'n)!
...and we are haulin' ass, too. Moles-Linien ferry rocks!
Heat Wave in Aarhus
Denmark is having, for here, a heat wave; yesterday was 29C (86F) and quite humid. And this is not a country where A/C is common. So we came into Aarhus in the heat and had a bit of trouble finding our hotel, which is on a one-way dead-end courtyard. But we kept our personal cools, parked in a big garage and ambled down a tiny pedestrian alley that seemed to lead toward the red pin on the iPhone's map—an alley that gave a good view of some of the town's public art.
Turn a corner and...
The lumps are rolled-up duvets. It's a very comfy bed although we didn't need the duvets.
The weather was perfect for enjoying the shady courtyard below our window.
After a break, we wandered around this very interesting town's mini-Stroget and dropped into its Domkirke (Cathedral).
The interior is all white, which felt cool on a hot day.
Outside again we watched some kids play in an interesting fountain, an abstract in stainless steel and black stone.
Then we found ice-cream cones and headed back to the hotel to rest up for the next big event.
Cookie Monster Underwhelms
So when poking around the internet looking for things to do in Aarhus, David discovered that Bob Dylan was appearing and on impulse, bought tickets. (Hey, it could have been worse, last week they had Rod Stewart.) Now, it is common knowledge that Dylan's voice fell apart more than a decade ago, but we hoped he'd bring a top-notch backing band and we could sing along to the oldies.
We wandered over to the venue an hour before the scheduled 8pm start. The place is a big outdoor grassy amphitheater between the huge modern concert hall and the huge modern art museum. They had very efficient and well-run concessions selling quite good pulled-pork sandwiches and beer. Oh, lots and lots of beer. Good gosh, the quantity of beer that was being drunk; these people can really put it away and stay polite.
Anyway it was open seating and pretty much all the sitting space on the grassy slope was full before we got there. We found a corner where only part of the stage was blocked by a tree and ate our sandwiches and waited.
In traditional rock-concert form, nothing happened until 8:20, then a young woman introduced as a "singer-songwriter" came out with a guitar and sang singer-songwriter-y type songs about her personal distresses for 40 minutes. Joan Baez she most definitely was not, nor Alanis Morisette (whom she seemed to want to be), either.
Then there was an hour wait, with occasional flurries of excitement when a roadie would cross the stage carrying a guitar. The Danes kept drinking their beer. (One woman near us was drinking from a pocketful of these, 2cl shots in test-tube like containers. When she wandered off she had gone through a dozen of them.) But they stayed polite, except for occasional rounds of rhythmic clapping that quickly petered out.
At exactly 10pm Dylan and band came out. We listened to three numbers and decided our advice was, "Time to hang it up, Bob." His voice can best be likened to the Cookie Monster with a bad cold. But also he kept every number to a slow tempo, and the band behind him was either not up to decent solos, or not allowed to solo. It was just boring. So we left.
To our surprise there were several hundred people around the lawn outside the venue. The sound was just as clear. If we ever attend another rock concert in Aarhus we'll know to bring a blanket and sit in the park.
Danes enjoying a concert in the twilight at 10pm. Art Museum "rainbow experience" upper right.
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