Whirlwind...

"We passed hieroglyphic scrolls, gold jewelry, sarcophagi, statues of pharaohs, and huge chunks of limestone.  Why would someone display a rock? Aren't there enough of those in the world?"

- Rick Riordan 

The past two weeks have been crazy! Katie arrived here on December 26th and since she got here we have been going non-stop.  

On her first day here we went to the national museum where she had way to much fun.

 And on her second day we went to Tivoli the world's second oldest amusement park.  Tivoli goes all out for holidays so it was decorated for Christmas with a theme of "Russian Christmas".

 We even went on the carousel where Diana stole a little girl's giraffe.  The little girl then proceeded to sit in front of Katie on the floor and stare at here the entire ride.

 Then the next day we went to Sweden for the day.  First we went to Lund to go to the Kulturen Museum, which I had gone to previously with Niklas.

 We even had sun!

 We are totally related.  I have this exact same picture of me doing this taken about three months previously.

And we again had way to much fun in what is supposed to be a kid's area.

 Seonaid and I were having a sword fight when this little boy came up, so of course instead of giving up my sword I decided to fight him.

 After Lund we fulfilled one of Katie's lifelong dreams and went to an Ikea in Sweden.

 And of course got Swedish Meatballs!

 We however ran into issues getting home.  The train kept being delayed and delayed, until finally we just decided to take a bus.

 And if all of that wasn't crazy enough we decided to take a three day roadtrip around Denmark.  We traveled the entire length and width of Denmark in three days stopping in 6 cities.

Copenhagen is on an island so to get from Copenhagen to the rest of the country you need to take this crazy long bridge.

Our first stop was in Ribe, the oldest town in Denmark.  

Our second city was Aalborg which is the third largest city in Denmark.  Aalborg is Denmark's major industrial city so we really only spent the night there and then moved on in the morning.

Our

Our hotel room however was straight out of the '50s.

 Complete with a double bed made up of two single beds pushed together.

The next morning we went and visited a Viking burial ground.

Spot the Katie!

 This place was not only creepy because it was a burial ground but also because every single one of those dark spots in the trees is a ravens nest.  There were hundreds of the giant black birds crowing from the treetops.

 Then we moved on from Aalborg and ventured into the very North of Denmark.  As you can see on Duncan, our GPS, we were no longer on green land we were venturing into some weird pink land, or sand as we soon found out.

 The northernmost part of Denmark has actually become a desert, just covered in sand.  It looked really eerie and similar to the Badlands in South Dakota.  

 Denmark ends on a peninsula of sand.  On the walk to get there we passed two German bunkers from WWII.  

At the end of the penninsula of sand the Baltic Sea and the North Sea crash into each other! It was so cool to see.  You can't really see in the photos but there was a definite line as to where they were colliding.   

However beautiful and cool this place was, we chose the wrong time to be there.  Not only was it the middle of winter but the tide was also rising so we had to basically wade through the ocean to get to the point.  Also this was the most inopportune time to find out that my rain-boots had a hole in them.  

 After walking to the point we asked this old Danish lady to take our photo.  We had the perfect backdrop of a beach, the ocean, a lighthouse, German Bunkers, really she could have gotten anything in the back of the photo.  Instead she zoomed in so far the we ended up with a very nice photo of the four of us that could have been taken anywhere in the world.

 After Skagen, the peninsula, we went to Aarhus, the second largest city in Denmark. In Aarhus there is a really famous art museum called AROS that we went to.  On top of the building is this really cool art piece that is a circular rainbow panorama.

Besides the cool rainbow panorama on top the rest of the "art" was pretty weird.

For our second night, I had booked what I thought was just a hostel room with four bunk-beds.  Instead our GPS led us through the middle of the woods, onto and unpaved road, and to a cabin with no other people around.  

Apparently since there was no one else staying in the place they upgraded us to a whole cabin, which turned out to be really really nice.  

Until we found out that the lock on the front door didn't work and then the fear of being in the middle of the woods with no one around kicked in again.

 In Denmark all of the children, up to about 12 year olds, wear these onesie snowsuits everywhere they go.  Katie loved them and wanted to bring one home, unfortunately they don't make them big enough for her.

Our next and final stop was, if you couldn't tell by the walk sign, Odense, which is the birthplace of Hans Christian Andersen.  If you do not know who Hans Christian Andersen is he wrote many well known fairy tales such as The Ugly Duckling, The Princess and the Pea, Thumbelina, and many more.  He is also probably the most famous Dane.  And even though he only lived in Odense until he was about 10 they still claim him as their own.  

Overall it was a really good trip and I am glad that I was able to see more of Denmark than just Copenhagen and we made it back in time for New Year's Eve!

Diana, Niklas, and I trying to be Danish.

After meeting at Niklas' apartment we went to the Radhus, or city hall, for fireworks.  I was under the impression that there would be a professional company lighting fireworks off at midnight, I was mistaken.  Apparently from Christmas to New Years fireworks are legal for everyone to use.  Which meant that every Tom, Dick, or Harry was lighting them off at the City Hall.  As in the guy standing next to me in the crowd held a stick up in the air with a firework on the end and lit it off.

 There were only a few near death experiences.  Also just in case anyone was wondering "Kom ned!" means get down right now or a firework will most likely hit you.

As dangerous as it sounds it was a lot of fun and no one was seriously injured.  And because this was a whirlwind of a visit we left at 10:00 the next morning to fly to London, but alas tales from that trip will have to wait for another post.