Hong Kong

After travelling since Sunday morning (Europe time) we arrived in Hong Kong this afternoon where it is warm and humid. A gentle walk around the block or two, a light meal and we are ready to sleep.

Malmo-Sweden

Today we travelled back up to Malmo ready to head on tomorrow flying from Copenhagen to Hong Kong via London.

Malmo is a really pleasant city of 250,000 people. It lies just across the water from Denmark and today was a clear day so we could see across the channel to Copenhagen. The Oresund(bridge)connecting the two is pretty amazing. We will travel on it tomorrow morning by train to the airport.

We spent the afternoon wandering round the old city ending up in a square surrounded by people attending the annual march for solidarity for people with disability. It was a really good atmosphere and great to be there. this was followed by sometime spent people watching in the square.A good way to end the scandinavian leg of the tour.

Skanor and Falsterbo

Friday was a full day at this conference. A really interesting day hearing about projects happening in a number of european countries on the development of accessible tourism in those destinations. Paricularly interesting is the Italian organisation COIN, the work that the University of Surrey have been doing with the CETA project, the work being done in the Czech Repbulic and the developments in Sweden. It has however added a number of dimensions to my thoughts on plans for work back in Australia. It will now be interesting to see what developments are discussed in Hong Kong next week.


Friday evening was spent at Angavallen Farm - a Restaurant highlighting their own organic produce. A memorable evening - the slogan is from field to fork - they just forget to mention the ringing of the cash register....

Flasterbo Sweden

We travelled to Sweden on Wednesday, and are now staying in Skanor on the Falsterbo Peninsula. I am currently attending a CETA (ENAT) Conference here on the competitiveness of accessible tourism. Topics for discusison are of interest and there are some interesting speakers including Dr Graham Miller from Surrey Uni. The networking opportunities with some of the accessible tourism projects around Europe are useful - a number of them are working on similar projects to ours and grappling with the same issues. It will be interesting to take some of the European perspective to Hong Kong next week

Copenhagen - Sunday and Monday

After a sleep in we caught the train from Odense to Copenhagen ( a ride of 1½ hours). The country side is flat and green with lots of Canola in flower. We spent the afternoon walking in the Tivoli area of Copenhagen. Copenhagen is another beautiful european city, very easy to get around and lots of old architecture to view.

Today (Monday) we spent time looking through one of the Royal Palaces and discovering the Canals. The weather has been cooler today - about 15 degrees - so an afternoon coffee and danish seemed perfect before an afternoon nap.

We have been struck with poor wi-fi internet connections for the last week, which we are finding very frustrating as we need to arrange some more accomm etc on our way home. We will have one more day exploring Copenhagen tomorrow before heading to Sweden.

Saturday

We spent today exploring Odense. A city of 180,000 and the regional capital of FUNEN
(the central island of Denmark). Odense was the home to Hans Christian Anderson and they are certainly proud of their local son. A 25% sales tax seems to be what makes Denmark slightly more expensive than other parts of Europe and the UK so it has been a matter of looking a little more closely at the cost of the evening meal....The weather has been warmer than expected - around 20 degrees today, so we have been dragging out the T-shirts from the bottom of the case. Odense has been a pleasant place to experience as our first encounter with Denmark. Tomorrow we head onto Copenhagen.

Thursday - today

Today we are catching the ferry to Denmark - an overnight trip which will take us to the west coast of Denmark - Osjberg. From there we will travel by train to Odense for a couple of days, then onto Copenhagen for another couple, before a 2 day conference on the Falsterbo Peninsula in Sweden. After that it is a flight (or ferry) back to London and on to Hong Kong for the Transed Conference.