Pictures from my bicycle trip in Denmark

In July 1999, I arranged with the Scantours travel agency to take a six-day bicycle tour in Denmark. Rather than using the bicycle supplied by Bike Denmark (the company that ran the tour), I brought my Bike Friday folding bicycle with me - this was so that I would also be able to use the bicycle for my trip to the IJCAI conference a week later in Sweden.

I had some horrendous problems with the airline connections getting to Denmark - but once I got there, the bicycle trip was fabulous: lovely scenery and gorgeous weather, with a deep blue sky and highs in the high 70s and low 80s.

This was a bicycle tour for the independent-minded: they gave me cue sheets and maps, and transported my baggage to the next hotel each evening, but otherwise I was on my own. There were a few other people on the tour, but I hardly ever saw them. I got lost a few times, but otherwise the arrangement worked well for me: I could go at my own pace, stopping whenever I wanted to take a break or a photograph.

Here are my pictures from the trip. All pictures were taken with a Kodak DC265 digital camera. The original images measured 1536x1024, and took about 1/2 MB each. I've compressed them and have reduced their dimensions for easy downloading over the Internet, but have not modified them in any other way.

Click on each small image to see a larger image.

(82K) 768 x 512 A boat in one of Copenhagen's canals.

(45K) 512 x 768 Since my airline problems delayed my arrival by one day, I didn't get a chance to do much sightseeing in Copenhagen, but I did get to spend an afternoon bicycling around and taking pictures. Here is one of Copenhagen's many ornamental towers.

(65K) 768 x 512 The Copenhagen Børsen (stock exchange). The tower is shaped like three intertwined dragons.

(74K) 768 x 512 A detail of the Børsen.

(81K) 512 x 768 Another detail of the Børsen.

(84K) 768 x 512 Yet another detail of the Børsen.

(76K) 768 x 512 A scene from Christiana, the famous "squatter town". I got yelled at for taking this photo, and I apologized and put away my camera - they don't like you to take photos there.

Christiana was an interesting, funky kind of place. At one point I was sitting in an outdoor cafe patronized by people of all ages -- mainly young adults, but a goodly number of elderly couples and also families with small children. The cafe had a very relaxed atmosphere; people were talking or playing backgammon or strolling around. The only thing unusual about the cafe was that when people smoked, sometimes it was tobacco and sometimes it wasn't.

(96K) 768 x 512 Another scene from Christiana. I think this is a small-scale reproduction of a large Buddhist stupa that I saw some years ago in Kathmandu.

(66K) 768 x 512 A tricycle parked next to a canal. This wasn't in Christiana but was close to it; and judging from the bicycle's construction and the slogan painted on it, I believe it was from Christiana.

(48K) 768 x 512 A bridge between two buildings in downtown Copenhagen.

(18K) 768 x 512 In the part of Copenhagen I visited, all of the street lights look like this, and are suspended above the middle of the street.

(57K) 768 x 512 A gravel road leading up to the Eremitage Slottet, during the first full day of bicycling. The land is part of Dyrehaven, a huge park which was originally laid out as a hunting ground for the King in the 1740s.

(38K) 768 x 512 A view from the grounds of the Eremitage Slottet. The water is the Øresund sound, and land beyond it is part of Sweden.

(77K) 768 x 512 A detail of the Eremitage Slottet.

(54K) 768 x 512 Another detail of the Eremitage Slottet.

(44K) 768 x 512 Part of the entrance to the Eremitage Slottet. The castle is not lived in, nor is it open to the public.

(89K) 768 x 512 The exit from Dyrehaven park, with my bicycle in the foreground. I think the sign says to close the gate after going through it.

(105K) 768 x 512 The gatekeeper's house, just before the exit to Dyrehaven.

(106K) 768 x 512 A cottage in Sletten. Notice the drain-holes in the tiled roof.

(117K) 768 x 512 A cemetary on the road close to the Louisiana museum. Each plot is surrounded by a hedge.

(54K) 768 x 512 The Louisiana museum is the museum that owns Andy Warhol's famous picture of Marilyn Monroe, and it is probably the most spectacular modern art museum I've ever seen. Here's a small portion of its huge, park-like sculpture garden.

(61K) 768 x 512 The DSB Rejsecenter building in Helsingør.

(59K) 768 x 512 My room at the Hotel Hamlet, in Helsingør, where I stayed on the second night of my trip. This room was so tiny that I had to fold up my bicycle and put it in the corner of the room.

The hotel elevator also was tiny: I had to put my bike on end to get it into the elevator. It was one of those old-fashioned elevators in which you pull the outer door open like an ordinary door, rather than sliding it to the side -- but what was especially unusual about it was that there was no inner door -- from inside the elevator, you would simply see the wall moving in front of you!

(70K) 768 x 512 A Helsingør street in early morning. I got started earlier than usual this morning, because the seagulls had awakened me at 3:30 AM. I hadn't realized how noisy seagulls can get - like crows in the US, except that they started the racket several hours before dawn.

(56K) 768 x 512 Bedding hanging out to dry.

(50K) 768 x 512 Boats in the Helsingør harbor.

(35K) 768 x 512 The entrance to the Helsingør harbor.

(58K) 768 x 512 Kronborg Slot, in Helsingør.The castle was originally built to collect tariffs on all ships crossing the sound between Denmark and Sweden. It's now a museum.

(51K) 768 x 512 Kronborg Slot, from somewhat closer. The castle used to have a huge moat, and the tiled-roofed building in the foreground sits where the moat used to be.

(48K) 768 x 512 Cannons at Kronborg Slot.

(88K) 768 x 512 The path I followed through Teglstrup Hegn (a forest). 13% of Denmark is forested.

(74K) 768 x 512 A lake in Teglstrup Hegn.

(70K) 768 x 512 A house with a thatched roof. I don't recall seeing any tarpaper shingles in Denmark; all of buildings had either thatched roofs or tiled roofs.

(58K) 768 x 512 A picturesque street in a small town. The town may have been Hellebæk, but I'm not entirely sure because I was lost at the time.

(54K) 768 x 512 While bicycling through Denmark's farmland, I saw little towers like this all over the place. If anyone can tell me what they're for, I'd like to know.
Update on March 20, 2000: in response to my above request, Vivian Larsen sent me a nice email saying that the tower is a transformer for converting electrical power from 10,000-Volt power lines to 230 Volts for use by consumers. Thanks, Vivian!

(42K) 512 x 768 This photo doesn't have quite the dramatic impact I had hoped for, but if you look closely, you'll notice that the tree in the middle of this wheat field is enclosed completely by the electrical tower.

(113K) 768 x 512 Danish boy scouts exploring the ruined castle at Gurre. The castle dates back to the 12th century.

(106K) 512 x 768 Part of Krogenberg Hegn (another forest). Logging goes on here -- I saw several piles of logs. Unlike most logging I've seen in the US, they do it by culling smaller trees and leaving the large ones standing. If you look closely in this picture you can see a few stumps.

(88K) 768 x 512 I got lost again and stopped here to ask directions. I also asked the workmen why they were building the cabin, and they said it was for export to Sweden!

(70K) 768 x 512 Tractor trails in a field of ripe wheat.

(77K) 768 x 512 I'm not sure what was going on here - during the trip I saw a lot of grain getting harvested, but it didn't look like this.
Update on Septmber 10, 2000: Erik Schmidt sent me a note explaining that the wheat was flattened by the wind. Thanks, Erik!

(48K) 768 x 512 Fredensborg palace, the queen's summer residence.

(55K) 768 x 512 Towers at Frederiksborg Slot. Frederiksbork Slot was built in the 14th century and burned down in the 19th century, but was restored and is now an elaborate museum.

(52K) 768 x 512 More towers, and part of the moat.

(70K) 768 x 512 The fountain in front of the castle. (The following week, in Sweden's National Museum, I saw a portion of the original fountain that used to be in front of this castle. That fountain was taken by the Swedes as booty from one of their battles with Denmark.)

(112K) 768 x 512 Detail of the wall in the previous picture.

(88K) 768 x 512 Some of the many coats of arms on display inside the chapel.

(49K) 768 x 512 A hallway with windows on both sides. It was difficult to take very many photos inside the castle, because they didn't permit the use of flash.

(87K) 768 x 512 A detail from the ceiling in the great hall. Unfortunately the picture is blurry.

(75K) 768 x 512 A Christmas-tree farm. Denmark is the biggest exporter of Christmas trees in Europe.

(88K) 768 x 512 When I originally passed these horses on my bicycle, they were standing farther apart and the male (on the right) had a huge erection. When I stopped to look at them, the male got curious about me and lost his erection -- but after a while, he lost interest in me and they started grooming each other.

(96K) 768 x 512 A houseboat for ducks, in a village pond (at Tingstedet, I think). Farther to the right (and not shown in the picture) were a young boy with a fishing pole, and a young girl with a bicycle.

(102K) 768 x 512 One unusual thing about the Danish country side was the number of tiny villages, sometimes consisting of just a few buildings and often only a mile or two apart. This one is atypical: in most of them, the buildings would start immediately at the city limit.

(74K) 768 x 512 This road changed names at the county line.

(40K) 768 x 512 Denmark has lots of windmills for electric power generation.

(84K) 768 x 512 On this gravel road, there was a woods on one side and a field on the other. While I was going down the road, a number of pheasants crossed from the field to the woods, but they were so quick that I had difficulty getting a decent picture.

(40K) 768 x 512 Towers on Kattingeværket, an old mill on the way to Roskilde (which is where I spent my fourth night). Shortly after the mill, I bicycled through Sankt Hans, a mental hospital that was as large as a small city.

(55K) 768 x 512 A snail alongside a gravel path a couple miles outside Kildebronde. Unfortunately the picture is blurry.

(64K) 768 x 512 Something you won't see in the US: bicycle route numbers. Sometimes the bike paths are separate from the road (as here), and sometimes they run alongside the road. When a bike path runs alongside a road, it's usually slightly higher than the road, separated from the road by a curb -- and usually the sidewalk is even higher than the bike lane, separated from it by another curb.

Unlike in the US, motorists treat bicyclists as full-fledged members of traffic.

(52K) 768 x 512 Part of the shoreline (seen from Amager Island, I think).

(48K) 768 x 512 Christiansborg Slot (I think), in Copenhagen. Notice the large moat. Behind me was a city park where a number of people were sunbathing, some of them topless.

(47K) 768 x 512 The castle tower.

(62K) 768 x 512 The castle tower from a distance, surrounded by more modern buildings.

(87K) 768 x 512 On the right is the Hotel Opera, which is where the trip began and ended.

For most of the trip, Bike Denmark gave me vouchers for dinner in the hotel restaurants. The one exception was the Hotel Opera, which doesn't have a restaurant. For dinner this evening, I ended up having sushi at a fashionable rooftop restaurant that had both a brasserie menu and a Japanese menu. It was nice sitting on the rooftop watching the light of the setting sun reflected from the other buildings - but as the sun got lower, a breeze came up and it began to get chilly. Just as I began to wish I had brought a jacket, one of the waitresses came by and handed out blankets to everyone!

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(82K) 768 x 512	A boat in one of Copenhagen's canals.
(45K) 512 x 768	Since my airline problems delayed my arrival by one day, I didn't get a chance to do much sightseeing in Copenhagen, but I did get to spend an afternoon bicycling around and taking pictures. Here is one of Copenhagen's many ornamental towers.
(65K) 768 x 512	The Copenhagen Børsen (stock exchange). The tower is shaped like three intertwined dragons.
(74K) 768 x 512	A detail of the Børsen.
(81K) 512 x 768	Another detail of the Børsen.
(84K) 768 x 512	Yet another detail of the Børsen.
(76K) 768 x 512	A scene from Christiana, the famous "squatter town". I got yelled at for taking this photo, and I apologized and put away my camera - they don't like you to take photos there. Christiana was an interesting, funky kind of place. At one point I was sitting in an outdoor cafe patronized by people of all ages -- mainly young adults, but a goodly number of elderly couples and also families with small children. The cafe had a very relaxed atmosphere; people were talking or playing backgammon or strolling around. The only thing unusual about the cafe was that when people smoked, sometimes it was tobacco and sometimes it wasn't.
(96K) 768 x 512	Another scene from Christiana. I think this is a small-scale reproduction of a large Buddhist stupa that I saw some years ago in Kathmandu.
(66K) 768 x 512	A tricycle parked next to a canal. This wasn't in Christiana but was close to it; and judging from the bicycle's construction and the slogan painted on it, I believe it was from Christiana.
(48K) 768 x 512	A bridge between two buildings in downtown Copenhagen.
(18K) 768 x 512	In the part of Copenhagen I visited, all of the street lights look like this, and are suspended above the middle of the street.
(57K) 768 x 512	A gravel road leading up to the Eremitage Slottet, during the first full day of bicycling. The land is part of Dyrehaven, a huge park which was originally laid out as a hunting ground for the King in the 1740s.
(38K) 768 x 512	A view from the grounds of the Eremitage Slottet. The water is the Øresund sound, and land beyond it is part of Sweden.
(77K) 768 x 512	A detail of the Eremitage Slottet.
(54K) 768 x 512	Another detail of the Eremitage Slottet.
(44K) 768 x 512	Part of the entrance to the Eremitage Slottet. The castle is not lived in, nor is it open to the public.
(89K) 768 x 512	The exit from Dyrehaven park, with my bicycle in the foreground. I think the sign says to close the gate after going through it.
(105K) 768 x 512	The gatekeeper's house, just before the exit to Dyrehaven.
(106K) 768 x 512	A cottage in Sletten. Notice the drain-holes in the tiled roof.
(117K) 768 x 512	A cemetary on the road close to the Louisiana museum. Each plot is surrounded by a hedge.
(54K) 768 x 512	The Louisiana museum is the museum that owns Andy Warhol's famous picture of Marilyn Monroe, and it is probably the most spectacular modern art museum I've ever seen. Here's a small portion of its huge, park-like sculpture garden.
(61K) 768 x 512	The DSB Rejsecenter building in Helsingør.
(59K) 768 x 512	My room at the Hotel Hamlet, in Helsingør, where I stayed on the second night of my trip. This room was so tiny that I had to fold up my bicycle and put it in the corner of the room. The hotel elevator also was tiny: I had to put my bike on end to get it into the elevator. It was one of those old-fashioned elevators in which you pull the outer door open like an ordinary door, rather than sliding it to the side -- but what was especially unusual about it was that there was no inner door -- from inside the elevator, you would simply see the wall moving in front of you!
(70K) 768 x 512	A Helsingør street in early morning. I got started earlier than usual this morning, because the seagulls had awakened me at 3:30 AM. I hadn't realized how noisy seagulls can get - like crows in the US, except that they started the racket several hours before dawn.
(56K) 768 x 512	Bedding hanging out to dry.
(50K) 768 x 512	Boats in the Helsingør harbor.
(35K) 768 x 512	The entrance to the Helsingør harbor.
(58K) 768 x 512	Kronborg Slot, in Helsingør.The castle was originally built to collect tariffs on all ships crossing the sound between Denmark and Sweden. It's now a museum.
(51K) 768 x 512	Kronborg Slot, from somewhat closer. The castle used to have a huge moat, and the tiled-roofed building in the foreground sits where the moat used to be.
(48K) 768 x 512	Cannons at Kronborg Slot.
(88K) 768 x 512	The path I followed through Teglstrup Hegn (a forest). 13% of Denmark is forested.
(74K) 768 x 512	A lake in Teglstrup Hegn.
(70K) 768 x 512	A house with a thatched roof. I don't recall seeing any tarpaper shingles in Denmark; all of buildings had either thatched roofs or tiled roofs.
(58K) 768 x 512	A picturesque street in a small town. The town may have been Hellebæk, but I'm not entirely sure because I was lost at the time.
(54K) 768 x 512	While bicycling through Denmark's farmland, I saw little towers like this all over the place. If anyone can tell me what they're for, I'd like to know. Update on March 20, 2000: in response to my above request, Vivian Larsen sent me a nice email saying that the tower is a transformer for converting electrical power from 10,000-Volt power lines to 230 Volts for use by consumers. Thanks, Vivian!
(42K) 512 x 768	This photo doesn't have quite the dramatic impact I had hoped for, but if you look closely, you'll notice that the tree in the middle of this wheat field is enclosed completely by the electrical tower.
(113K) 768 x 512	Danish boy scouts exploring the ruined castle at Gurre. The castle dates back to the 12th century.
(106K) 512 x 768	Part of Krogenberg Hegn (another forest). Logging goes on here -- I saw several piles of logs. Unlike most logging I've seen in the US, they do it by culling smaller trees and leaving the large ones standing. If you look closely in this picture you can see a few stumps.
(88K) 768 x 512	I got lost again and stopped here to ask directions. I also asked the workmen why they were building the cabin, and they said it was for export to Sweden!
(70K) 768 x 512	Tractor trails in a field of ripe wheat.
(77K) 768 x 512	I'm not sure what was going on here - during the trip I saw a lot of grain getting harvested, but it didn't look like this. Update on Septmber 10, 2000: Erik Schmidt sent me a note explaining that the wheat was flattened by the wind. Thanks, Erik!
(48K) 768 x 512	Fredensborg palace, the queen's summer residence.
(55K) 768 x 512	Towers at Frederiksborg Slot. Frederiksbork Slot was built in the 14th century and burned down in the 19th century, but was restored and is now an elaborate museum.
(52K) 768 x 512	More towers, and part of the moat.
(70K) 768 x 512	The fountain in front of the castle. (The following week, in Sweden's National Museum, I saw a portion of the original fountain that used to be in front of this castle. That fountain was taken by the Swedes as booty from one of their battles with Denmark.)
(112K) 768 x 512	Detail of the wall in the previous picture.
(88K) 768 x 512	Some of the many coats of arms on display inside the chapel.
(49K) 768 x 512	A hallway with windows on both sides. It was difficult to take very many photos inside the castle, because they didn't permit the use of flash.
(87K) 768 x 512	A detail from the ceiling in the great hall. Unfortunately the picture is blurry.
(75K) 768 x 512	A Christmas-tree farm. Denmark is the biggest exporter of Christmas trees in Europe.
(88K) 768 x 512	When I originally passed these horses on my bicycle, they were standing farther apart and the male (on the right) had a huge erection. When I stopped to look at them, the male got curious about me and lost his erection -- but after a while, he lost interest in me and they started grooming each other.
(96K) 768 x 512	A houseboat for ducks, in a village pond (at Tingstedet, I think). Farther to the right (and not shown in the picture) were a young boy with a fishing pole, and a young girl with a bicycle.
(102K) 768 x 512	One unusual thing about the Danish country side was the number of tiny villages, sometimes consisting of just a few buildings and often only a mile or two apart. This one is atypical: in most of them, the buildings would start immediately at the city limit.
(74K) 768 x 512	This road changed names at the county line.
(40K) 768 x 512	Denmark has lots of windmills for electric power generation.
(84K) 768 x 512	On this gravel road, there was a woods on one side and a field on the other. While I was going down the road, a number of pheasants crossed from the field to the woods, but they were so quick that I had difficulty getting a decent picture.
(40K) 768 x 512	Towers on Kattingeværket, an old mill on the way to Roskilde (which is where I spent my fourth night). Shortly after the mill, I bicycled through Sankt Hans, a mental hospital that was as large as a small city.
(55K) 768 x 512	A snail alongside a gravel path a couple miles outside Kildebronde. Unfortunately the picture is blurry.
(64K) 768 x 512	Something you won't see in the US: bicycle route numbers. Sometimes the bike paths are separate from the road (as here), and sometimes they run alongside the road. When a bike path runs alongside a road, it's usually slightly higher than the road, separated from the road by a curb -- and usually the sidewalk is even higher than the bike lane, separated from it by another curb. Unlike in the US, motorists treat bicyclists as full-fledged members of traffic.
(52K) 768 x 512	Part of the shoreline (seen from Amager Island, I think).
(48K) 768 x 512	Christiansborg Slot (I think), in Copenhagen. Notice the large moat. Behind me was a city park where a number of people were sunbathing, some of them topless.
(47K) 768 x 512	The castle tower.
(62K) 768 x 512	The castle tower from a distance, surrounded by more modern buildings.
(87K) 768 x 512	On the right is the Hotel Opera, which is where the trip began and ended. For most of the trip, Bike Denmark gave me vouchers for dinner in the hotel restaurants. The one exception was the Hotel Opera, which doesn't have a restaurant. For dinner this evening, I ended up having sushi at a fashionable rooftop restaurant that had both a brasserie menu and a Japanese menu. It was nice sitting on the rooftop watching the light of the setting sun reflected from the other buildings - but as the sun got lower, a breeze came up and it began to get chilly. Just as I began to wish I had brought a jacket, one of the waitresses came by and handed out blankets to everyone!