Aeroskobing and Marstal.

This morning, after a lovely breakfast on the veranda of the hotel, we went for a bit of a shuffle round the village, trying to get some pictures that would do justice to the magic of this place. Some of the buildings are so tiny, only shorter persons could live in them.

Next, we caught the free bus to Mastal, situated at the eastern end of the island, about 8 kilmetres as the crow flies, 12 by bus thanks to the circuitous route. The bus squeezes down some tny streets, seemingly with millimetres to spare, but we made it without scraping anything. Marstal is a pretty place, perhaps not quite as quaint as AeroSkobing, but still with many narrow streets and pretty houses. Hygge is big, and every window seems to have model boats or wooden birds or some artful object displayed.

After lunch we headed down to the Maritime museum. We didn't have great expectations, but it turned out to be quite remarkable and surprising. A very varied collection of objects nautical, lovingly displayed and cared for. It included a collection of work by J.E.C.Rasmussen, a 19th century Danish nautical theme of painter who lived in Marstal. He visited Greenland several times, and some of his work is a very humane depiction of life there. He apparently disappeared over the side of a boat returning from Greenland. We had never heard of him but we liked his work.

We had a very enjoyable couple of hours there. Our only difficulty, apart from the lack of English captions, was our inability to find the exit. To navigate through the maze like collection of rooms and buildings one had to follow red arrows painted on the floor. We followed arrows up stairs, through spaces constructed to look like ships, wove through street scapes with reconstructed shop fronts, startled ourselves multiple times coming upon life like figures in period costume, and all the time, the departure time for the bus was drawing closer. At last we came to a courtyard and there was a door with a not particularly conspicuous sign saying "udgang" . I thought "Exit" was an international standard, but obviously not in Marstal. A really fun museum though.

But we sprinted down and caught the bus with minutes to spare. Back in AeroSkobing, we walked over to the Vesterbro - the Western beach, and enviously admired the row of charming beach huts there. A bit like the bathing boxes at Brighton, there are restrictions - on size, no plumbing, no staying overnight. But most of them are done up really nicely - lots of hygge again. I would love to transport one home to put in the backyard.

We had dinner in a shop that sells freshly smoked fish, and ate at table watching the going on of life in the harbour. A new lot of cruising boats in, tonight some sort of group of five yachts who must cruise in convoy. We visited one of the "bog bix" which seem to dot the island. These are honesty box second hand book stalls, in a variety of locations. This one was in the Aero winter bathing club room on the breakwater. While Anne selected her book, I examined the photos of club members swimming off the nearby steps, covered not by gentle sunshine as today, but by snow, and the water filled with clumps of ice. Impressive. Even more impressive was the absence of a lock on the door of the club building - it says something about what a benign peaceful place this is.

We can hardly believe we have been here for little more than 24 hours. I realise that I really like islands. And this is a particularly nice one.