<p>Southbound again, the daisy route takes us to Hirtshals, a small seaport that seems to function solely as a huge outlet mall for Norwegians, who take the 17-hour round-trip ferry from Oslo to shop here. The thought of Danish prices being a bargain hunter's bliss is mind-boggling, and I make a note to steer clear of Norway.</p>

<p>Okay, enough daisying around. We jump onto the E45 motorway, which takes us at triple-digit speed straight to rush hour in Arhus, Denmark's second-biggest city, where traffic is what a Los Angeleno would call sparse to nonexistent. Our chosen hotel is full, but we find a wildly overpriced "suite" on the ninth floor of a hotel with a sweeping view of the containership port. As an ex-merchant seaman, I'm happy, despite nearly being stranded in the hotel's Fiat-sized garage elevator: It was too narrow for me to open the fat Cayenne's door to press the up button.</p>

<p><b>Day Four: &#197;rhus to Copenhagen, 106 miles</b><br>
As a nation composed of some 15 islands and one peninsula, Denmark relies on car ferries as a major component of its transportation network. There are 44 domestic ferry crossings throughout this little land, plus another 27 to Sweden, Norway, Iceland, and Germany. Some carriers are the size of small cruise ships; others are appealingly rudimentary.</p>

<p>Getting from Arhus back to Zealand, across the Samso Strait, takes just over an hour aboard a moderate-sized tunnel-hull speedster. We're propelled at a good 50-mile-per-hour clip not by screws but by four raging jets of water pumped out the stern by 35,000 horsepower, creating a cloud of following spume the size of a small cumulus. We share a considerably more leisurely and less spectacular ride across the narrow Isefjord inlet with a wiry middle-aged German who is fascinated by the Porsche and sets up his Leica to snap a shot of himself standing proudly beside the car. We, in turn, are fascinated by the fact that he has covered much of the nearly 150 miles from Skagen on in-line skates. "It is difficult with a pack on your back," he says with a laugh.</p>

<p>The chug across the fjord puts us again onto the daisy route, this time meandering toward Helsing&#248;r, site of <i>Hamlet</i>'s Elsinore Castle, which in fact was no such thing. Kronborg Slot, as it is properly called, was a huge tollbooth visited only occasionally by nobles. The Swedes didn't have E-ZPasses, and Danish cannon controlled the narrow strait, extracting tribute from all the shipping that passed through.</p>

<p>Yet Shakespeare, who never saw Kronborg Slot, couldn't have invented a more appropriate setting for <i>Hamlet</i>. If Mad King Ludwig's Neuschwanstein is the Disney-esque prototype of cutesy castles, Kronborg's copper roofs, ornate spires (one a lighthouse), enormous ramparts within ramparts, huge moat, and swifts swooping around like daytime bats define a classic Frankensteinian fortress.</p>