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On our second full day in Aarhus we walked through the older part of the city, and ran across some beautiful canals.

Unlike Copenhagen, the canals here seem to be too restrictive for anything more than kayaks, but they still give the city a special charm.

We visited the Aarhus Cathedral, the longest and tallest church in Denmark.  The church was founded in 1190 and the original version was completed in 1300.

We were able to enter the cathedral for just a few minutes as they were about to have Sunday services.  As with most churches in Denmark, it seems to be rather ornamentally subdued.

The organ made up for that though!

These little dudes by the organ were interesting, and seemed to be completely out of place in this setting.  It almost looks like something Antoni Gaudi would have installed!

As always, Denmark loves their statues and fountains!  We liked this one of a hen that appears to be holding a golden apple.

We then ventured out in the car and headed north to visit some spots in Mols Bjerge National Park, which became a national park in 2009.  The first spot was Poskaer Stenhus, a stone dolmen (prehistoric burial chamber) with a large circle of stones around it.

This dolmen dates to 3300 BC, and the remarkably flat capstone weighs 12 tons.

A farmer started destroying the site in 1859 so that he could use the rocks for a building, but he was stopped by a local priest and the site has been formally protected since 1860.  This photo gives you an idea of the rocks that make up the stone circle.

We then visited a site called Trehoje Mols, a set of three stone-age burial mounds known as barrows.  These were constructed using surrounding dug-out turf.  We are standing on top of one and looking towards the next one

Selfies on a burial mound.  Yep, we did that.

Our last stop was a hike to the ruins of Kalo Castle. You need to hike out to the castle on this cobbled road.

This castle was constructed in 1313 by the Danish king Erik Menved in an effort to defend this territory from rebellious locals.

The remains are now protected as part of the National Park.

The interior of the castle ruins has been set up for tourists to get excellent views and not kill themselves in the process.

This is the view looking back towards the start of the hike.  You can see the narrow strip of land where the cobblestone road lies.

One last look at the ruins on the hike back.  Cool spot!

We had dinner that night at Aarhus Street Food, which was a very cool food court where we got some great Mexican food.  They even had a wine spot where I was able to try a bunch of wines by the glass., and the guy was giving healthy pours since it was his last night working there!

Walking back after dinner we saw this beautifully lit up tower.  This is part of the Aarhus City Hall.  The lighting of this one rivals the ARoS Art Museum!  Very cool!

Coming up next, we depart Aarhus and head southwest towards the town of Ribe, stopping at a Viking site along the way.

We picked up our rental car at the Copenhagen Airport and drove northwest to Odden, where we caught a ferry to the historic city of Aarhus.  This is the second largest city in Denmark, but it feels dramatically smaller than Copenhagen.  The city dates from the late 8th century, and for a period was a fortress for the Vikings.

We checked into our hotel and just outside our room was this beautiful rooftop.  This is the ARoS Art Museum, which we didn’t visit, as it’s mostly modern art, which isn’t our thing.  However, the roof is very cool!  More photos coming from this evenings sunset.

We walked through the old town and onto the waterfront, and visited the local public library, Dokk1.  This is the largest public library in Scandinavia.

It reminded us of a library we visited in Gronigen, Netherlands, and it seems to be very popular with the locals.  We ran across a large metal structure hanging on the top floor of the library.  This is called “The Gong”, and is the largest tubular bell in the world, at 7.5 meters long and weighing 3 tons!  When a child is born in nearby Aarhus University Hospital, the parents can press a button at the hospital that rings the gong.  Pretty cool!

Across the bay I saw what looks to be a statue of a ship’s hull.  It’s an industrial area so we couldn’t get any closer to check it out.

On the waterfront is a pretty cool fountain called Endless Connection.  I can just imagine how popular this spot would be on a warm summer day!

That night we watched an incredible sunset from our hotel balcony.

A close-up of  the ARoS Museum roof a few minutes later.

One final look at the gorgeous skyline, with the museum roof all lit up.

The next day we made our way just south of Aarhus to visit The Infinite Bridge.

Every beach should have one of these round piers you can walk around!

Just a little further south is this gorgeous building built into the hillside.

This is the Moesgaard Museum, one of the best museums we’ve ever been to!  It’s fairly new, opening in 2014, and uses state of the art technology to tell the stories of Denmark’s past.

There are several permanent exhibitions that cover the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the Viking Age and the Middle Ages.  You could easily spend a full day here, and if you want to experience everything in a museum (a problem I tend to have) I could even see spending two days here!  We only spent 4 hours, so I will just cover the highlights here.

The Stone Age exhibit (covering 12,500 to 1700 BC) has some very cool tech that shows how Denmark evolved after the ice age.

It has realistic looking sets that depict how life looked for early man.  This set portrays a shell mound created after years of living in the same place.

This remarkable clay disc, discovered just north of Aarhus, depicts two stages of a solar eclipse that occurred on May 5, 2789 BC.  The age of this thing is amazing!

The museum also hosts the Grauballe Man, a body found in a peat bog in Denmark in 1952.  Apparently it was quite a sensation back in the day!  The body dates back to the 3rd century BC, while the conditions in the bog preserved the body as if they had just died.  It’s been determined he was killed, most likely as some sort of human sacrifice, as his throat was slit.  The red hair comes from the conditions in the bog.

During the Viking Age, Aarhus was known as Aros.  This depiction of the city during the time of the Vikings (from 800-1066) is superimposed by the current Aarhus Cathedral, giving a good feel for how small the city was at that time.

The Viking Age exhibit had a group of people who you could follow through their every day life by listening to numerous stories.  The wax figure to the left of Kim in this photo looked pretty damn real!

On the stairs below the top floor were wax figures of several influential people throughout history.  This is another one that looked so real it was kind of creepy.

We had missed this one section so we back-tracked so we could check out the Gokstad Boat.  This is one of the boats that was uncovered with the Gokstad Ship, a 9th century Viking ship that was discovered in a burial mound in 1880.  Unfortunately, the Gokstad Ship is in the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo, which we couldn’t visit as it’s currently being renovated.  However, at least we could see one of the original boats that the ship carried onboard so they could go ashore.  It’s in remarkable condition!

Coming up next, we visit Mols Bjerge National Park, and see some more sights in Aarhus.