Our ride to Copenhagen was another first for us. It started out with a broken train engine, it would only go in one direction and it happened to be the wrong direction. It took nearly 2-hours, but we did a giant turn around somehow. Next, we had no idea the train crosses the Baltic Sea on a boat ferry. That’s right, the train drives right on the boat. Once on the boat the passengers get off the train, go upstairs to restaurants and stores. After about 30 minutes, it was announced to return to the train! A couple minutes after boarding the train, the train pulled off the boat. We are in Denmark! It was still a bit more of a ride before we arrived in Copenhagen.
At the train station, we had a friend pick us up, a foreign exchange student that stayed with my family 20 years ago. He is now an elected official in Denmark and owns a Copenhagen tour company. His tour company is Hamlett Tours, http://hamlettours.com, provides sightseeing in and around Copenhagen. Let them know Chris and Elizabeth sent you! We received a special offer to stay with Rasmus at his house. The timing was great, he had the week off, Denmark Potato Harvest holiday, so he offered to personally provide us with tours of the area.
After a day of rest, we decided to go to the Zealand region. After getting up and lounging around for a while, we slowly made our way to the car and to make the hour drive to Mos Klint. The region is known for its large cliffs of chalk. Yeah, it is the same chalk that teachers use to write on chalkboards. I actually never knew there were cliffs made of chalk. We started our exploration to the tops of the cliffs to oversee the sea below. Following a short walk along the cliffs, we were all ready to make our way down the many stairs to the bottom. The girls were in a rush to get to the bottom, because on the drive Rasmus explain there are three things to look for, chalk (which is everywhere), ancient fossilized squid, and ancient fossilized shark teeth. The girls really wanted to find squid and shark teeth. We obviously found plenty of chalk. We did find several squid fossils, but struck out on the shark teeth. The girls were not ready to give up looking, but we had to call it day. They even got over the smell of the seaweed to dig right in looking for shark teeth
The next day we made our way around the city of Copenhagen, we visited the homes of the royal family, witnessed another changing of guards, and visited the famous little mermaid statue. I think the girls were a bit disappointed by the statue. Kaleigh even said, “It doesn’t look like the Little Mermaid to me.” Though they both enjoyed seeing it. Exploring further into the city, we happened to be at the royal families’ homes when the changing of the guards started. We had to stay and watch the process, there was a bit less people than in London! Elizabeth thought the royal families’ square was pretty cool with houses facing each other. I don’t think it would work out, our kids need to move a bit further away!
As the girls would say, “Another museum……”, however, I think the girls enjoyed this one more than many previous. The Castle Museum housed many of the crown jewels, at least those that did not get sold by Christian II and Christian IV. You can see many of the items they sold at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg! After the museum, it was time to head back to make dinner and rest.
While we were in Denmark, it rained a lot! One particular evening, Rasmus, took us to the harbor in Copenhagen because there was a reenacted navy battle between Denmark and Sweden. Can you guess who will win? It was one of many battles between the Danes and Swedes in history, and of course, this one Denmark wins. I think now the two countries battle it out on the sports field in place of battleships! The reenactment we watched was two replicated battleships, canons and all, it was pretty neat. They fired muzzle loaders and canons without balls, and fireworks at each other. I mentioned it rained a lot while we were there, well it poured during the battle, and poured, needless to say we were soaked, but it was fun.
The next day, we got a special treat, since our host is a member of The Folketing “Danish Parliament”, we received a quick private tour of the Christiansborg Palace. Elizabeth thought it was special to go inside the Folketing Chamber, “Parliament Floor”, when it was empty, except us. We have now visited both Germany’s and Denmark’s Parliament Floors. Plus, the main reason we stopped by, we got a to see Rasmus’s office. He has a pretty nice view!
After leaving the Parliament building we headed to the Roskilde Cathedral. This cathedral had hundreds of people buried inside of it, including all the kings and queens of Denmark. The current queen has already picked out her resting spot and it is underway of being decorated. As we walked through the cathedral Rasmus talked about the history of the church and many of its unique features. The girls have three favorite spots. First, upstairs you can find the imprint of a fox footprint on a brick. During construction, the bricks would be molded and air dried to harden. During the drying process, one night a fox walked across the bricks leaving a footprint in one of the soft bricks. It hardened leaving a permanent fox footprint in the brick. The 12th Century fox footprint can still be seen in one of the bricks. The second is the black tomb. It is believed to be an evil spirit and you can spit on it. The girls got a laugh. The final is King Harold Bluetooth. Yes, he is where you get the name Bluetooth. Though they have no idea what Bluetooth looks like there was a very colorful painting with blue pants. The girls seemed to like him!
After the cathedral, we visited a Viking museum. Of course, the girls by this time were through with museums. However, it was interactive for the girls, they got to make flat bread over an open fire, try on Viking clothing, climb on model boats, and practice weapon throwing skills. The museum had several partial Viking ships, built from pieces they had found in the area. It was pretty neat to see what an actual Viking ship looked like.
We still had several days not planned between Denmark and Sweden. It was short debate on what to do after we learned of LEGOLAND. The next day we boarded another train and headed to the original LEGOLAND. We booked two nights in a LEGOLAND associated hotel just a couple of hundred feet from the entrance. Along with our hotel reservations we received 2 day tickets for LEGOLAND.
On the day we arrived, we checked in our room and headed straight to the park before it closed. The first thing Brooklyn wanted to do is find all the roller coasters and ride them. Kaleigh wanted to ride rides, but not the big ones. Elizabeth and I just wanted to explore the park. We let in to the girls’ impulse, since they have been good at all the recent museums and headed to rides. We quickly found the one of the largest rollercoasters and headed to ride it. As expected, they were too scary for Kaleigh, but we convinced her to ride on one. She screamed and repeated yelled “I don’t like it”, but she survived. We nearly had her convinced to ride one more, but she got lucky and got her way on the next one, they said she was too short. We spend our last hour of the park wondering planning for the entire next day. The next day it did not take long to cover the rest of the park. We walked through the Lego towns, I think we were all in awe at the all of the items built out of Legos. The day was a bit cold and rainy and the park was empty, but we had fun anyway. In fact, Brooklyn and I rode the fast rollercoaster over and over, not even having to get off, since no one was in line. Elizabeth and Kaleigh did the same thing on one of the smaller rollercoasters they both enjoyed. We didn’t even have to get off the ride!
Brooklyn and I also found one of our favorite Lego sections, Star Wars. There are small scenes to nearly fully size ships built out of Legos. It was pretty cool. It did not take us long with so little people in the park to ride all the rides and feel we covered almost all the park. We felt two days was plenty at the park.
The next morning, we had our train booked and ready to jump on the bus, when we realized we needed to get bus tickets. Originally, we thought we might be able to purchase them from the hotel or LEGOLAND like we did at the train station going to LEGOLAND, but nothing. The only way to get a ticket was purchase it from the bus driver. We thought no problem, but as I researched it many people was reporting it was cash only. We had no Danish cash, we had used credit card throughout Denmark. We had a slight panic, we only had like 30 minutes before the bus we needed to make in order to board our to train on time, and we needed to figure out how to get enough cash for the tickets. Luckily, it only took a few minutes to find an ATM outside LEGOLAND. We nearly sprinted there to get cash. Just to be safe, I took the cash and did run to a coffee shop across the street to make sure we had exact change. The girls headed straight to the bus stop. After getting change I made it to the bus stop about 7 minutes before the bus arrived. We made it. We still are not sure if the bus excepts credit cards or not, but we did not have the time to take the chance.
That night we made it back to Copenhagen to spend one last night with Rasmus, before moving on to Sweden. We really enjoyed out stay in Copenhagen and would like to return one day.
