Today, after a filling breakfast at the hotel, we did a self-guided walk around the old town, following my travel book by Rick Steves. We saw a lot of tiny old buildings (none over 2 stories, some even painted using the old combination of clay, lime and chalk), cute gardens, old town centre, nice alley of trees along the shore, boats, yachts, etc. Every house is different and they are all painted with bright colours and decorated with little thingies, plants, cute curtains. Most houses have bikes parked in from, some have cars. The town feels well-preserved and well-loved by its inhabitants, it is authentic and sincere, not a fake plastic tourist-trap sort of place. We saw people working in their gardens, minding their shops, talking to their friends on the street, repairing their houses, living their lives in their town. And while there are tons of tourists here, but they seem to be a classier type of crowd, yacht owners and such. They seem to be here to relax and enjoy the town, not to gawk at every cliche attraction. There is a lot of children and dogs here too, and we also found several cats by chance, young orange tabby (Alekro played with him for about half an hour %) ), a couple of grey tabbies and a huge fluffy maine coon! This little town really is a magical and romantic place, I would love to come here again!
I also took a bunch of photos in our hotel, it's so charming. In our room, for example, there's a shelf with old books (English, Danish and probably German), which also has an old dusty fez, a bunch of small teddy bears, some tin cans and wicker boxes. There are two windows right in the roof and you can see red-tiled roofs, chimneys and the harbour with arriving ferries from here.
After the walk we were caught in a short but heavy rain, but we managed to hide out in a store. It passed pretty quickly though and, since the weather was pretty warm, streets dried out immediately. So, we went and rented some bikes from the hotel, where Alekro was staying (pretty much around the corner from our place, but not nearly as cute and fancy). We followed the route outlined in my book around the island, saw a number of small villages, traditional farms, lots of fields and cows. We rode bikes along narrow roads and mini-highways with no special bike lines, so it was a bit scary, but fun and exciting! We stopped wherever we liked, took photos, ate sandwiches saved from breakfast - it was a great ride. But the terrain was pretty hilly and the weather was windy, so we got tired (not Alekro though, he's an experienced biker) and took a shortcut back to our town. What's interesting that the bikes here are not locked to poles, like in Toronto, but rather they have small lock on their rear wheels that block the wheels from turning. So, a thief would not be able to ride the bike, but could still pick it up and carry it away. I guess people don't do that here :)
In the end of the day we had a dinner at a nice restaurant that serves fresh locally-caught fish. What's weird is that the service pretty much anywhere in Denmark is not that great: restaurant staff don't pay attention to customers and you have to call them all the time when you need anything, some waiters and other customer service workers are rather rude even.
Still, this does not spoil the magical feeling of the island of Ærø! Another pleasant surprise: I got to listen to one of my favourite sounds tonight - rain drumming on an attic's roof!