Aalborg; Sunday, 01 August, 2010

The plane landed ten minutes early and the luggage was round within minutes, but that still didn’t stop us from missing the bus into town. This wouldn’t have been a problem if the guidebook had been correct with their “Buses every 15-30 minutes” statement. Sadly, buses are only every hour (I don’t know where they got their information from) so I had a long wait. In the end I sat it out in the airport terminal with a cup of coffee and a free internet connection.

By the time I arrived in the city centre and walked to the hotel it was just after two. I knew that the hotel’s official policy was that you couldn’t check in before three, but I thought I would give it a chance and see if I could check in early. Not only did I manage to checkin, but the very nice lady on checkin changed my booking over to the special summer deal which meant I got breakfast thrown in for free and 90Kr knocked off the price of the room.

After dumping my stuff I went for a wander around town, mostly looking for somewhere to rent a bike from as the city is very flat and easy to get around. Sadly the bike hire shop was closed on a Sunday. Aalborg does run a city wide bike hire scheme where you release a bike from a stand for 20Kr in the same way you would a trolley at a supermarket and then get your 20Kr back when you drop it back off again. In a lengthy walk around town I came across plenty of empty stands but no bikes (interestingly I only saw three actual bikes being cycled, which makes me wonder where the rest of them had gotten to.) I did, though, stumble on the entrance to the ruins of the Franciscan Friary (the Gråbrødrekloster Museet), which are located underneath the city centre, so I popped down in the lift (the museum is free, but the only access is via the lift which charges per 250kilos, so a very light family can get in quite cheap!)

My wanderings took me out of the back to town, through the city cemetery to the North Jutland Art Museum. Whilst I’m not a massive fan of modern art, the guidebooks (which on this occasion had got it right) said it was an interesting place to visit, if only for the architecture of the buildings.

After having a look around I wandered up being the museum to the Aalborg tower, which sits on the hill above the museum overlooking the city centre, fjord and surrounding, very flat, countryside. The views on a clear day like today were excellent.

From the tower I wandered back down into town and had a long wander around the city centre, ending up in the Aalborghus Slot to have a look around the former city castle. Just outside the grounds were a selection of restaurants, so with the late evening sun still keeping the city warm I sat out for a bit to eat before heading back to the hotel.