Helsingborg

We spent 3 nights in Helsingborg and loved every bit of it. It seems a bit like Perth in that it's a great city, nice and chill, but not many tourists and when you are a tourist you can see most sights in 3 days.
On our first night we had some German schnitzels which were very yummy and then walked around the city a bit while it was lit up. The city hall is the most impressive we've seen so far with its red brick, big clock tower, and stained class windows. It is huge! The next day we walked 30 minutes out of the city centre to visit Fredriksdal open air museum which is essentially a replica farm from various parts of the Skåne region in Sweden (some of the houses were built in Fredriksdal in the 18th century). We learnt about the history, walked through all the old buildings, admired the herb and veggie gardens which they use in the cafe, looked at the farm animals, and petted some very friendly cats. That night we walked to the end of the Helsingborg marina to watch the sunset over the ocean. The ocean here is a part of the North Sea called the Øresund Strait and Denmark is only 4km away (a 20-minute ferry) so we could see Helsingor (a Danish town) very well from where we were sitting. That's an easy swim if the water wasn't so cold!
On Thursday we saw the sights of the city centre in the daylight. We walked up the Terrace Steps to Kärnan which is a 35-metre tall tower and use to be the centre of a bigger castle fortification to protect the city in the Sweden-Denmark wars. We couldn't go to the top of the tower because it was closed for the off-season but the view of the city was amazing even from the bottom, even across to Denmark again. From here we walked to the Santa Maria Church which is a Gothic-style cathedral with an extraordinary interior. We were lucky enough to walk in towards the end of a beautiful singing performance. Their voices in the great acoustics of the church was very special to hear. For the rest of the day we took a bus to one of Southern Sweden's biggest shopping centres to explore and buy a new carry-on suitcase for our journey home so we can fit all the things we've bought. There was also a huge lolly shop which obviously we couldn't pass without going in so we ended up getting a mix'n'match bag each which will (hopefully) last a couple of days. We then finished our Swedish stay by eating meatballs at IKEA which we thought of as being quintessentially Swedish and a fitting way to end our fortnight here.Baca selengkapnya