Whew, an extra-value day, but a very nice one. At breakfast our landlord at the Villa Provence gave us tips on where to go on our day of driving around. We followed his plan pretty much exactly, beginning with a drive eastward to ...
Ebeltoft
Ebeltoft is an old, quaint village ("lots of people go there to get married," the landlord said). We headed there first and from the municipal car park could see two things worth visiting. The first was the Frigate Jylland ("you-lan"), once pride of the Danish navy.
This was a very nicely-organized museum with a strong focus on kids.
Every kid who entered was greeted by a sailor who decked them out in a sailor collar and cap.
So this was a big sailing warship (with an auxiliary steam engine).
Around the 1860s, the ship was in one battle. A few years later, King Christian IX used the Jylland as the Royal Yacht. The Queen didn't like sea journeys, and thought this nice big boat would give a smoother ride.
Smooth riding in the Royal apartment.
The other 437 crew didn't have it quite so nice. Below decks are several dioramas of sailor life, including having a leg amputated by the ship's surgeon. This is how most sailors slept.
It seems the restoration of this ship from near-hulk to showpiece took many years. It's certainly a fine naval museum now. You can touch the cannons and look into the tiny officer's cabins, and generally get the feel of life on a sailing warship.
View down the gun-deck.
On the other side of the car park was a Glass Museum. We're fans of glass art so we went there. They had a lot of nice pieces of art glass, including a couple of Chihuli pieces, which was kind of like meeting an old acquaintance in a foreign land.
The neatest thing, which didn't photograph too well, was The Cosmic Space by Tróndur Patersson. It was room surrounded by abstract painted glass with mirrors on floor and ceiling.
Falling up into Cosmic Space...
Ebeltoft has a quaint main street where we ambled a bit.
Then we headed west through the countryside to ...
Silkeborg
Silkeborg sits at the head of a system of lakes. This is a major Danish summer playground; there are camps and marinas all along the shores as well as some very nice homes.
Approaching Silkeborg we noticed a Danish thing we'd also seen in Aarhus: when street tree dies, they don't just take it out. They take off the branches and turn the trunk over to a sculptor to make it into art.
A fleet of boats provides hourly hop-on hop-off transport up and down the lakes. One of them, the Hjejlen (Plover) claims to be the oldest working paddle-wheel steamer in the world.
Unfortunately we just missed its run and took a more modern ship instead.
The hotel owner had talked about this old restaurant, the Ålekroen (o-luh-crone), literally The Eel Inn, where eel and other fish are a specialty. So we hopped off the boat there,
and had a late lunch or early supper (it was now about 4pm), including eel.
The tubular pieces in the skillet? Not sausage. Eel.
This was an exceptionally pleasant place on a hot afternoon: cool breeze, boats and ducks going by, good food. The eel? Well, not bad, crispy skin and mild-flavored white meat but very oily.
After our meal we went back to the dock and hoisted the signal requesting a boat.
And rode back to Silkeborg looking at the activity on the water.
Himmelbjerget
One more thing! On the route toward Aarhus from Silkeborg is the national park for the Himmelbjerget (Sky Mountain, or Heaven Mountain), the highest peak in Denmark at 147 meters (480 feet). Here's the view from the top. Click it for massive panorama.
That was the day; we sped back to Aarhus on a motorway and collapsed.
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