Aeroskobing

Thursday, September 15 

We left our dollhouse of a cottage in Svendborg to catch the ferry from the port to Aero, “The Fairytale Island.”  We sat on the sun deck for the 75-minute journey and enjoyed the ride as we passed sailboats, with their white sails against the blue sea, shoreline homes, and some of Denmark’s 406 islands.  

We disembarked in Aeroskobing, Aero’s main town, and spent several hours walking the cobbled streets of the impossibly cute village.  The town square, shaded by an enormous tree, was ringed with historic buildings, the church, inns, shops, and an old courtyard and mews that now house a distillery.
Many of the buildings in town seen to be buckling at unusual angles and appear as if they might fall down, were they not buttressed by adjoining structures.  The old houses seemed to be half or three-quarters scale; I felt tall alongside them!  

We followed a walking tour describing many of the notable buildings in town, and as we were looking at one of the oldest homes, a woman riding by on her bicycle stopped to chat.  Susanne said that the home had been owned by her grandparents during the mid-20^th century.  At just that moment, we’d been reading about the landscape architect who’d owned the home and created the backyard garden -- her grandfather!  Tom asked about the clump of greenery that was growing on the roof; we’d also seen it on some other houses in town.  She said that her grandfather had planted them as a way to ward off lightning strikes!  Susanne also said that her family had been on the island for eight generations, and had also built another of the oldest homes in Aeroskobing.

One of the loveliest parts of Aeroskobing is Pier Path, a gravel walk along the shore lined with tall poplar trees.  The path skirts the lovely rear gardens of a row of homes that were once occupied by the island’s fishermen.  

The “Doll House” is said to be the most photographed house in Denmark, so far be it from us not to take the bait!

While on the island, we saw several bridal couples.  Aero is known as “The Wedding Island”, and couples (of all varieties) come to be married there.  With few regulations and bureaucratic hoops to jump through, same-sex couples and those of mixed nationalities flock to Aero to tie the knot.  Even the New York Times has recently taken note: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/31/travel/destination-weddings-denmark.html?_r=0

After wandering for a couple of hours, we had a picnic lunch in a shady park near the shore.  The park was built around a pond surrounding a small island set with models of some of the town’s buildings. We needed the shady rest, as the day was sunny and warm; we would have been very comfortable in shorts and t-shirts today!

After lunch, we walked along the harbor and marina to a spit of land lined with colorful tiny beach huts along the sea.  Talk about doll houses, some of these were about the size of two-holer outhouses – but so, so cute!

After our return ferry, we drove to our base for three nights in Fredericia, where we have another terrific apartment.  We’ll set out tomorrow to spend a couple of days exploring Jutland.