Denmark day 2

Today's been about finding things and seeing the lay of the land, as second days of your holiday often are. We've been into the nearest town, Grenaa, to find a supermarket and have a mooch around.

The supermarket was great fun. We're obsessed with food at the best of times, so having a whole lot of Danish food to play with was great. It was surprisingly easy to understand what was what - we speak absolutely no Danish apart from knowing how to say thank you (tak). But there's a lot that's reasonably similar to English (for example, I'm always amused that child in Danish is barn - or bairn, as you'd say in Newcastle) due to our Viking past. And we do know German - there's a fair amount that overlaps. Although ost (cheese) and skinke (ham) had us puzzled for a bit.

We found a Danish supermarked called Kvickly in Grenaa, and here's what we bought:

It included a few small cans of Tuborg, lots of bread/yoghurt/orange juice/fruit/salad/ham/cheese and some interesting sausages and frikadellen. This little lot (one bag and the overspill you see here) came to an astonishing 431.11 DKK. That's about £45. Ouch!

Our top tips for food:

• it might sound obvious, but look for food (eg yoghurt, milk) that's from Denmark - it's cheaper (and has fewer food miles)
• own brand stuff is usually cheapest, just like it is at home
• if you have space in the car, bring your own basics. We travelled with a crate of stuff - rice, pasta, couscous, marmite, jam, tea bags, coffee - you get the idea.
• discount supermarkets like Aldi and Lidl might be cheaper. We'll roadtest one, and get back to you.
  

After we'd tried out some of the comestibles for lunch, we pottered back into Grenaa to visit the tourist office, get a parking disc (all Danish car parks seem to require them, but they're free from the tourist info), and have a look at the town. It's quite picturesque, but half an hour was long enough for a wander round. There's lots of clothes shops (underwear and shoes seem to be the top sellers), a few cafes, and....that's about it. Apart from this nice statue of a pig.


We were hoping for a bakery so we could have yet more Danish pastries (except they're not called that here, of course - the Viennese seem to be blamed instead). We didn't manage to track one down in Grenaa itself, so we headed off towards the port instead. Pastries duly found (a round swirly thing covered in chocolate which was so vast it had to be shared between the three of us), we had a look around the fishing boats (and assorted jellyfish).


Tomorrow we're off on an excursion - depending on the weather. The weather's not been great so far - massive scary thunderstorms and pouring rain last night (which always sounds worse in a caravan), and dull grey cloud today. But it's warm - about 23 degrees - and the cloud cleared this evening so we ate tea in the sunshine - bliss.