Each day in Sweden, we ventured out somewhere different. We didn't let the brisk fall weather stop us from hiking in the woods or walking along the beach. Tristram and the girls went crabbing and enjoyed the challenge despite not catching anything. Camilla and I went on a nice bike ride into town along the rails-to- trails path to buy mussels for lunch. My favorite part of each day was getting to know Camilla and Tristram over gourmet meals after the kids went to sleep.
Within 2 hours, we travelled on a train, ferry, bus and minivan from Copenhagen, Denmark to Hoganas, Sweden and arrived at Tristram and Camilla’s adorable cottage. While the outside is original construction from 1840, the inside and the thatched roof was completely renovated in 2006. I was amazed and honored that these virtual strangers, who started hashing with the Dutch Treat Family Hash in March, opened up their home to us for 3 days. The girls had fun playing with 4-year-old Beatrix and 7-year-old Freya and I was thrilled that they all got along very well. Mostly they played inside, but they enjoyed getting a little muddy when they designed an obstacle course in the backyard “borrowing” construction materials from next door.
Gotta love a country where there’s a button right on the elevator to make a confession like this...Strangely, when I used a Danish translation program, it meant “To Speed.” Perhaps it’s a free fall indicator, but in our case the girls were confessing.
As big fans of Disney’s “The Little Mermaid,” we had to find the statue in honor of the famous tail (or tale, depending how you look at it). It was quite a hike across Copenhagen, but we managed to get there before dark and walked through a cool fort on our return trip. We really enjoyed visiting the Hans Christian Andersen Museum where animatronics
We spent one day visiting Copenhagen’s museums. I’m not usually a big fan of censorship, but I wish the curator at the National Gallery had censored the sculptor in the main gallery rather than awarding him with Danish sculptor of the year. It was a gruesome display of clay; we much preferred the view of the nearby woods from the giant windows. We also preferred seeing the crown jewels at nearby Rosenborg Palace built in 1606. It was very cool to actually step into the vault to see the fantastic crowns and assorted jewels. By far, our favorite museum was the National Museum, which has the best children’s museum we’ve ever visited. In addition to dressing up in the above middle ages costumes, the girls dressed up in 1940’s, Pakistani and viking outfits. Sadly, they didn’t have anything big enough for me. On rainy Monday while the museums were closed, we forked over the big bucks to go to the tacky Ripley’s Believe or Not and the more interesting Guinness World Records Museum.
Or in this case, ice cream. In order to avoid the frustrating searches we’ve conducted in other big cities for perfect restaurants, I decided to consult my handy dandy DK guide book for suggestions. After dragging the girls across town and getting slightly lost, I managed to find the restaurant I had chosen only to discover there was nothing on the menu that they’d eat. After much debate about the near-by packed sushi place or the bagel place, I finally gave up and decided there was nothing wrong with having ice cream for dinner (I’m sure I’ll get a Mother of the Year Award). Had better luck the next day for lunch, when I followed the DK guide to a vegetarian buffet near our hotel. It was so good, that we went there the next day as well. We gave up on the idea of dinner out and instead had picnics in our room from an organic grocer (guessing not too many guests in a 5-star do that).
We enjoyed seeing the Danish countryside on the 3.5 hour journey by bus and train to Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark, where we spent 3 nights for the cultural phase of our vacation. We stayed at the historic Palace Hotel, which is being converted into a 5-star Le Meridien and offered discounted rates during construction. Sadly, we preferred the old world feel of the unrenovated portions of the hotel to the contemporary look of the finished portions, which again proves that we're not the 5-star type. As we do in most cities we visit, we spent most of our time wandering the streets. Above is the beautiful Nyhavn harbor.
We spent a long time gawking over Holland made out of Legos. Somehow it’s much more quaint getting photos of the girls in front of this version of our train instead of the real thing. While we do see windmills from the train, the view from our station isn’t pretty like this. In addition to the 20 million Legos depicting countries in Miniland, there were great scaled reproductions of larger sites as the Statue of Liberty, Mount Rushmore and the space shuttle.
In addition to the cool Legos sculptures, there were some really fun rides. Luckily there were no crowds so we could go on our favorite rides again and again. Check out a promo video of Power Builder, a custom programmable ride that was Veronica’s favorite; Ashlynn and I were wimps and didn’t go upside down like she did. We all loved the above Jungle Racers and the Dragon roller coaster. I was worried that two days might be too much, but we enjoyed every minute.
When I realized that I’d be on my own with the girls for their October break, I set out to find somewhere we could visit that I’d feel safe and could get around easily. While I was debating about which Legoland to visit, a new friend invited us to visit her family in Sweden. That was the sign I needed to finalize plans to go to the original Legoland in Billund, Denmark, where Legos continue to be manufactured (although there’s rumors that the factory is moving to Poland). While it’s tiny compared to any of the Disney parks, there was enough to do to keep us happily occupied for two days.
After all that swimming this summer at my dad’s house, Ashlynn quickly progressed through her next set of swim lessons to earn her “B” diploma. This exam included swimming several laps of breaststroke wearing long pants and a long-sleeve shirt and the above 18-foot underwater swim as well as a variety of other strokes and skills. I had to laugh when I saw the mascot for the pool. He clearly wasn’t a real hippo since he didn’t try to drown any of the children. 
In honor of Leiden’s October 3rd Liberation Day, I liberated the girls from school at noon so we could go watch the parade. Apparently there’s a different theme each year and this year’s was the Number 7. Not surprisingly, there were lots of 1970’s bands with dancers. Some of the other ties to the Number 7 were more creative, such as the Dwarf and the 7 Snow Whites. The above cycling veggie stand was part of a “ 7 Days a Week” group that also included women with ironing boards, breakfast in bed and laundry tubs all on wheels. At first glance the below “7th Heaven” seemed innocent enough until we got a good look at the larger angels who somehow don’t seem so angelic after all.
