Today was departure day! We were all a little sad to leave, but it was just the BEST island week ever. And at the risk of boring you with another sunrise photo from the same damn spot, it was actually especially beautiful. Note the bird that was hired to sit in picturesque fashion on the flagpole.
Since we did not have to vacate the rental until 10 am, Mark and I took one more walk after breakfast, down the rocky portion of the Kyststi to the harbor and back–we had not taken some of it since our first day here, when it was all a bit muddy and slick from the recent rain, but this morning it was glorious.
When we got back, though, we walked into a dramatic rescue effort–we saw Andrea running down the hill from the grocery store to our place with a cardboard box. They had found one of the hedgehogs–of which we had not seen any sign the previous evening or earlier in the morning–because it was making sounds of discomfort (Andrea described it as screaming like a baby) and looking sick, so she kicked into hero gear immediately. She found the number for a hotline on a Danish website (none of us speaks Danish) for the Bornholm animal rescue, and Peter was able to explain to someone in English what was going on. They told him they’d send someone and to put the hedgehog in a box in the meantime. We gave it a little dish with water and I even found it some bugs, and we also looked for the others, who looked in better shape, as the little guy in the box also started to look more responsive. The main thing was that we needed to be at the bus stop within the hour, but luckily, the guy from animal rescue showed up before we had to leave, and we could tell them what we knew–that there were four and that we had not seen any sign of the mother. He said that the hedgies were definitely too young to be out, and of course they would not normally be out in broad daylight at all. He gathered them all and was looking carefully through the hedge to see whether there were more or whether the mother was in evidence when we had to leave for the bus–but we knew they were in good hands. Huge relief.
The bus ride back was the same we took to come up from Rønne harbor the day we arrived, and so we rode for an hour along the coast and took in many pretty sights one more time. We got in at the very first stop, and we watched the bus gradually get more and more crowded with people and bags, since Saturday is the typical day for people to leave after a classic week or two, and hand over the vacation rental to the next party that rents it for a week, so everyone was catching the ferry with all their stuff. But everyone still had a place to sit and was chirpy about the slight delays as everyone was scrambling onto the bus. We only had to wait for a few minutes for the ferry to arrive and to get on board, but this time, it was a ferry to Ystad in Sweden which only took 90 minutes. We made a beeline for a set of front row seat in the restaurant, and decided to splurge on the delicious brunch buffet (it was 12:30 and we were hungry!) as we looked out the huge front windows. (Ok, Mark also went to the back and looked out at the huge masses of water churned out by the water-jet engines–we were pretty fast!)
Then we took a regional train through the southern tip of Sweden to Malmø, and switched to a second train to Kopenhagen that went across the famous new-ish (2009) Øresund Bridge, 8 km long. By 4 pm we were in Copenhagen and made our way on foot to our 2-night rental in a very funky but large 1-room apartment on the first floor in a courtyard full of bicycles and trash cans across from a café/restaurant that turned out to be a pretty noisy neighbor late into the evening. Quite a contrast to our last rental in terms of view and population density. It was also quite toasty when we arrived because it was in the upper 70s with not a cloud in the sky, and all the windows were closed. But we managed to cool things down a little by opening windows and closing blinds, and although we are only a block from some very fancy streets with fancy luxury stores, we are at the edge of a more normal urban neighborhood, and I found a discount grocery store only a few minutes away. I bought a few supplies and fixed us all a salad with some roast chicken on it; we had that with some of the bread we had left over from earlier as a light dinner.
Then we ventured out for a long evening walk. We are situated less than 500 m / yards from the Nyhavn, so we hit some of the big Kopenhagen highlights that Mark and I had seen a few years ago, because Peter and Andrea had never been to Copenhagen. We walked along the Nyhavn canal to the harbor, to the royal palaces (Amalienborg) by the harbor (where we also saw the royal yacht) and on to the old fortifications and military barracks (Kastellet) where the Little Mermaid sculpture is (now all a very walkable green space) and then back home. It was beautiful, in some spots packed with tourists, but they always thinned out a bit at the waterfront and in the parks. Peter and Andrea were delighted with everything, and we had a wonderful time, finishing things up with some ice cream on a bench on the big plaza that is only five mintues from our place, Kongens Nytorv. We were a bit too tired to take a lot of pictures of Things Everyone Takes Pictures Of, so we ended up just the obligatory Little Mermaid (although you can look at her on every Danish Cookie box, looking exactly like that) and with some sunset pictures of the so-called “marble church” and some golden domes belonging to a Russian Orthodox church. When we got home we were good and tired, but sleeping was a bit of a challenge with the ruckus of a Saturday near the center of Copenhagen. It didn’t help that when the bars closed, some of the people who work for the cafe had a long and serious conversation right below the apartment that lasted until 4 in the morning, complete with cigarettes. We are not in Bornholm anymore, and not as well rested, but it’s part of being in a vibrant and “happening” city!
