Éric & Rachel: Aalborg

Second stop on our tour - here is Aalborg up almost as far north as you can get in Denmark. Allborg is an industrial port city with an old center and lots of huge industrial sites as well as lots of new buildings of architectural interest if not always success!

Here, to begin, the view from our room (I was sharing with Elinor)...

Out the left window you see the beginning of the older town, out the right window you see the enormous Nordkraft center. The theatre where we were performing is in there as well as art studios, cinemas, restaurants, student centres, a gym, a library, it seems that there is a whole town in that building alone! The building used to be a coal burning electric power plant. Quite an improvement!

Here, looking further to the right, you can see the new opera house. A very imposing building. I think that it tries a little too hard at being grandiose without quite succeeding.

University buildings - I think that these are more interesting.

Here is the opera house from the front. There is a definite Frank Gary influence.

Funny that they have to illustrate their point!

I stumbled upon this, or rather this series of buildings which I thought very beautiful contemporary design. It turns out that it is the Jorn Utzon center. Jorn Utzon is the architect who designed the sidney opera house and many other gems. He comes from Aalborg and was the son of a ship builder and one can certainly see the shapes of the boats in his designs.

All the buildings sit around this inner courtyard. The center houses Utzon's firm (now run by one of his children) as well as a gallery and café and recital space.

Utzon Center with some daffodils

I did make it to tango in Aalborg. It was a very fun evening but all I have to show for it is this picture taken as I walked across a very windy bridge on my way there.

The flowers in the streets were all like this. Something that I have not seen before. The earth is mounded up high and the pansies and tulips are planted all over - solves having to deal with the relative height of the plants.

The old streets are tiny. From a distance they look dwarf size.

Our hotel - "Hotel Aalborg" right across the street from Nordkraft.

Alex, Peter and Elinor - the three musketeers - I am the fourth!

The sun is setting across the fjord.

Led by Peter, we rented some bikes for an hour from the hotel and rode off to the outskirts of Aalborg to this chalk mine. So nice to be out on two wheels. Such freedom!