Day Two on the activities board was sightseeing in Lund and Malmö. Lund is a university town, and is also where Michelle works. Malmö is a bigger city, directly across the Baltic Sea from Copenhagen.
Both Lund and Malmö have parts that are quite old. Most of the streets we were on in Lund were cobblestone, and a good portion of Malmö was too. The buildings are really beautiful, but there is definitely a mix of old and modern to the cities.
We started our day with a bike ride into Lund. It was about a 40 minute ride, mostly though fields. Luckily, it's almost completely flat, so it was a pretty easy ride.
Once we got into Lund, we walked through a city park where Chris and Michelle have gone to a springtime festival and picnicked a few times. We were wearing jackets, but because the sun was out, a local was out sunbathing by the fountains.
We did a quick walk through a few streets in Lund.
Then we took a 15 minute train ride over to Malmö. We didn't have a particular destination in mind: our plan was just to stroll around and check out some of the picturesque streets of they city.
Our first stop was Stortorget, the Big Square. The big fancy building is some kind of government building.
There was street after charming little street.
We did a little shopping at some cute Swedish design shops. And we walked over to Lilla Torg, the Little Square, for a fun lunch at a cheesecake cafe. Mmmm!
There was lots of strolling, window shopping, and popping into stores that caught our eye. The afternoon went by really quickly, but we kept in mind that we had to bike back home from Lund! So we wisely decided to head back to Lund before we were too tired. But before we did, we stopped in at St Petri Church.
It was, of course, beautiful inside.
We didn't linger too long, and then headed back to Lund via the train. We wanted to advantage of the sunny, warm-ish weather, so we biked around a few streets in Lund. It's such a cute little town! Our plan is to go back another day so we can walk around a bit more, and I can poke around to a more Christine-level.
We also popped in to one more church! Lund Cathedral was consecrated in 1145 but maybe could have been built as early as 1085. It's one of the oldest and most important cathedrals in Swedish history. A lot of kings and queens met there, and it was the headquarters of religious administration for a long time. It is also extremely beautiful.
There is a legend that a troll named Finn the Giant built the cathedral. Chris and Michelle told us that the version of the legend they heard said that Finn wasn't allowed to leave the cathedral before it was finished. When he tried to, he was chained to a pillar as punishment. There are some other variations of the story online, but whatever the real one, there's a sculpture of him in the crypt.
The whole cathedral was amazing, but I think my favorite thing about it might have been the astronomical clock on the back wall. I'd never seen one like that in a church before, and it was incredibly ornate. I read about it online after we got home. The clock has two knights that tell time. The top part of the clock is strictly astronimical: it has sun and moon rising and setting times and such. The bottom part tracks when religious holidays will fall. It was built in 1380, and I find it completely fascinating that such complicated technology was worked out then in such a beautiful way.
However, amazing clock or no, it was getting kind of late and we still had a 40 minute bike ride home. So Chris, Michelle, and T dragged me away from the cathedral, and home we headed!
We finished out the day with dinner at home: Chris made a warm, cheesy pasta, and he gave the rest of us little jobs so we felt like we were helping. It was fun, happy, and just like old times!
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