The dahlia garden
These dahlias in the King’s Garden at Malmö Castle were the highlight of the day.
Today we traveled between the cities of Helsingborg and Malmö in Sweden. We woke up and booked our train tickets over a nice breakfast at the hotel The national passenger train company in Sweden is called SJ, but the train we took was provided by a carrier called Øresundtag, a private carrier. In fact many other private carriers operate on Sweden’s rails to provide service all over the country. It was a bit confusing at first, but luckily the SJ app schedules across all the carriers and allows you to purchase tickets for your journey in one place! Nice!
Once we landed in Malmö, we were able to check into our hotel early (also NICE!). We were tired but ready to get out into town and see what Malmö is all about! It turns out, Malmö is all about tourists who came for the day from Copenhagen. Haha! The city is beautiful, with its many canals, its port, and its cool architecture.
We headed over to view Malmö Castle, which is closed for today unfortunately, but we were able to walk the ramparts, and enter the courtyard. The castle was built in the 16th century by a Danish king, Erik of Pomerania. It is the oldest castle in the Nordic area, and it was built to control shipping through the sound (Øresund) by establishing a fortress on the other side of the sound from Copenhagen. Eventually, like all castles, it fell out of use and was re-designated as a barracks and later as a prison. Eventually it fell into the hands of the Swedish state, who preserved and restored it.
We had a lovely lunch in the castle gardens and took about a billion pictures of dahlias and sunflowers. We wound our way over to the castle windmill, and we walked around the castle moat. You guys, Sweden is beautiful!
After castle-time, it was canal-tour time. Our guide to Malmö was a finicky and quirky Finn named Marcus. Marcus had all kinds of jokes for us as the boat took us around the central canal system of the city. It was Marcus who showed us all of the trees and the rocks, “telling us that these are all Malmö trees and rocks.” One quotation repeated about 1000x in every possible scenario was that “Malmö is the greatest city in the world, so they say.” What we got from the tour that was of value: Malmö grew into a port town, reclaiming a significant portion of its western holdings from the sound waters. The port of Malmö was once busy with shipping and passenger traffic, but now sits quiet today. The completion of the Øresund bridge, which spans the sound between Copenhagen and Malmö, served as a killing blow to the port. Most traffic to and from the city now flows over a bridge, rather than across the water. The architect of the West Port stands immortalized in bronze statue-form overlooking his now dormant port, which has mostly been converted to housing.
The finally indignity of the tour was referring to the city skyline as Malm-hatten. It was cheesy, but it served to get us out onto the water. Also, during the entire trip there was a Frenchman coughing his lungs up right behind me. It was clear, this guy did not have a simple cold. Folks, if you get sick on vacation, stop. Stay in your hotel. It sucks, but don’t spread your disease! Ugh!
Anyway Canal tour ended, we stopped at the hotel for a rest. After yesterday’s record setting distances, we were in need of a rest. Semi-rested we then headed out for dinner. We capped the night off with a scooter trip down to the coast of the Øresund at the extreme West side of the old port. We sat there and watched the sunset and then lingered, listening to the waves. We watched the lights in Copenhagen across the sound become brighter and brighter, as folks around us were exercising and gathering for fellowship along the shores. Eventually, we decided to call it a night. We jumped on our rented scooters and zoomed our way back to the hotel along the well-planned bike lanes of the city.
Tomorrow, we are planning to divert to a surprise bonus Swedish city, before returning to finish the day out here in Malmö. We’ll catch you all then!
