Day 6 - Let your inner Viking out

9:15am - Copenhagen

Everyone is getting up a little slower today... maybe we're finally adjusting to the time difference.  We leave Copenhagen tomorrow, so among other things, today is a day to start putting our stuff back together.  Doing some laundry, having fun guessing what the labels on the washing and dryer controls mean.  Want to play along?

How bad could I mess it up, anyway?

Today, it's off to Frederikssund to a Viking festival.  Looks like fun... and we get to ride a train an hour each way to get there! Whoot!

Hope the weather doesn't get any worse than this

7:30pm Copenhaggen

Back after the trip up to Frederikssund and back.  We got to experience some more of Denmark's excellent rail system.

As much as we've enjoyed Copenhagen, getting out of the city into the countryside was a nice change of pace.  We walked from the train station to the festival grounds and wandered through a craft fair.  We spent alot of time at a armorer.  He was really nice and took time to show us his wares and try them on.

Looking at the arms in the vendor stall was fun, but we really enjoyed taking it to the next level and giving axe throwing a try.  The whole family gave it a shot and we looked like pros

Viking Axe Throwing from Dan Douglas on Vimeo.

We wandered through the village and also watched a viking ship out on Roskilde Fjord.

After a few hours in Frederikssund, it was time to board the train for the ride back to Copenhagen.  We had a quiet dinner in our flat and savored our last night in Denmark before flying to Munich tomorrow and picking up our car.  We're ready to shift this vacation into road trip mode!

Day 5 - Tivoli and the canals

11:15pm - Copenhagen

Another full day in Copenhagen.

Today we marched off as a family and did bought tickets for a combination canal tour and Tivoli gardens adventure.

It was fun getting a sense of Copenhagen from the water... prowling canals and "ducking under bridges".  Here's a video of Elodie "saving" Laura when we went under a low bridge.

Elodie saving Laura from Dan Douglas on Vimeo.

After the tour, we started walking toward Tivoli.  Of course, the most friendly pedestrian route went the entire length of the Strøget so naturally, that's the route we took.

Besides the obligatory souvenir shop, we also stopped in in Illum, a nice department store plopped in the middle of the pedestrian shopping route.  We bought some warmer clothes for Katie, Laura and Charlie because it's been cloudy, and in the upper 50's most of the time we've been here and not all of our party was prepared for that kind of whether.

Charlie and I joked that the Strøget was sort of like a combination of Santana Row, Pier 39 and Downtown Disney.  It's definitely a trip and worth checking out.



Finally, we reached Tivoli.   After grasping the ticket pricing structure and buying the necessary ride wristbands, we dove into the rides.  Well, the kids did.

Tivoli is Sharks Territory now!

Laura and I setup a late lunch / early dinner at Italia - La Vecchia Signora  -- Laura and I cleverly secured a table and ordered pizza and beer and waited for the crew to come and find us.  Worked like a charm.

I had to duck out after that to go wait from the delivery of Elodie's carseat from British Airways...
[picture of the carseat]  It finally showed up, my theory is that the handlers missed the "short connection" tag at LHR and didn't hustle it along in time to make the same flight.  The rest of the delay was the standard "we'll get it to you eventually drill."  Once the car seat was delivered,

it was back to Tivoli and more rides with the girls.

We came home after that and pretty much collapsed from a day well spent.

Tomorrow it's off to the Fredrickssund Festival to let a little of our inner viking out.

If you're reading this and thinking, "Well, gosh, this writing is pretty boring." You're right. I'm not really trying to be profound here. That's too high a bar to set when making an entry every day. Yup. Some people manage, but I'm not one of them. The purpose if this blog is for me to capture memories and images of this trip. It probably reads like a kid's report. I don't really care. I made the decision before I started that I was going for quantity over quality.

Every day of this trip, we'll do something. I want to remember what that is. Every day.
I know there will be days where doing a blog entry will be hard, but I know that not doing them daily and going back later is impossible.

Thanks for hanging in there. I try to write something interesting every once in a while.