41st street side next to the flagpole sunset park
So many reasons to explore the Danish Vesterhavet region
IS THE “VESTKYST” THE BEST COAST IN DENMARK?
The sea feels different on this side of Denmark. Here you must climb tall grass-covered dunes that crest to reveal wide windswept swaths of open sandy beaches. This is the North Sea and it can batter this shore. It definitely feels wilder and freer compared to the calmer Baltic Sea around Copenhagen. This is the Danish west coast. Vestkysten in Danish. We recently spent a long Easter break weekend in a cozy summer house nestled safely behind those sand dunes north of Hvide Sande in west Jutland. Come see why this area is worthy of exploring more.
SEEK OUT A SUMMER HOUSE IN VESTERHAVET
Coming from the island of Zealand (Sjælland) and the Danish capital, sometimes we need a break from our urban life. We live in the city, in a historic Copenhagen flat. And while we adore it, we have nary a garden or yard. So when I seek out somewhere to get away (when borders are still closed) there are always a few things our family requests.
Outside spaces for starters. In nature. Then things to explore and potential activities that teens might like to do. Outdoors. A ho
People Who Play
Years ago, I used to bike over to the Sunset Park pool from Fort Hamilton Parkway, at the Kensington-Windsor Terrace border. My oldest son was a toddler, strapped into a neon green front seat, and we’d bike on the sidewalks because there weren’t as many protected bike lanes back then.
We’d park at the big bike rack on 7th Avenue, which is now a Citi Bike station, and enter up the main stairs. That side of the park is shady, with mature London plane trees. Before e-bikes and e-scooters and mopeds, before Rec Center construction, that side of the park was quiet, less traveled. The noise, if there was any, centered around the entrance to the pool.
Back then, the changing rooms were inside the Rec Center. They’d turn the gym into the men’s and women’s changing rooms, and you’d walk through the gym bathrooms to get to the pool deck. There was always someone at the door to make sure you showered.
There wasn’t a baby pool or shallow end, even way back then, so my toddler would play around on the long ramp and then hang on to the sides of the pool while I treaded water next to him.
Then and now, from inside the pool, the sky looks big and rimmed by gree
Fifth Avenue entrance to Sunset Park
My five-year-old daughter Claudia loves to go up and down the hills of Sunset Park on her scooter. We put her little crash helmet on and push her up the park hills, but she loves to go down them herself, having become an expert braker and master of turns. She loves to go fast and possess me run after her, foremost us up the hill from 41st Street toward the miniature, often overcrowded playground on the 44th Street side of the park.
When we are sans scooter, she loves to run from the high point of the park, down the hill toward 5th Avenue and have us chase her. She follows other paths through the park. One is up the hill past the flagpole that marks the old site of a dismantled merry-go-round, and then down toward the sprinkler pool—an open concrete field with a huge geyser of water where in the summer neighborhood kids play.
Often we walk together along Fifth Road, past all the Mexican grocery stores and taquerias. On weekends the taquerias turn into dancing halls—the young Mexican migrant workers come pouring into Brooklyn after having finished a week of work out on the farms of rural Long Island. They eat and drink and compensate to dance with th