Ærøskøbing

Just a quick post without a picture, that will come tomorrow.

After a very short (4.65 nm) trip we arrived on Ærø. When a Danish place name ends in "ø", it means it's an island. The converse is not true: not all islands end in 'ø'. It's similar to the ending in 'oog' in German or even Dutch, which also indicates (even means) 'island'.

Some time ago, I promised that we would get to places with more 'Scandinavian vowels', and this is probably as good as it gets as this time around we are in Ærøskøbing.
This is known as the 'fairy tale' town, as it has not changed a lot from when it was built in the 1600's and in fact the restrictions on building and renovating are such that not much can be done.

It looks very pretty, we'll post pictures tomorrow. The harbour is very lively, especially since the weather is nice and sunny. Every harbour we have come to in Denmark has a 'grillpladsen', a place where you can 'bar-b-que' or 'braai' your food and eat it. This is extremely popular in Denmark and almost always we see families using these facilities for lunch or dinner. Of course they are spotless, in good repair and are used in such ay manner that they stay like that. Here in Ærøskøbing the harbour even has a galley with a stove, oven and refrigerator which the yachties can use!

Tomorrow, we'll stay here, cycle around over the island and do some provisioning as there is a very nice supermarket right next to the harbour and we plan to be on some (very) small islands after tomorrow.

Watch this space!