Copenhagen

Saturday evening we arrived at Copenhagen train station at about 8.30pm - very tired (and more than a little stinky) after our day at Legoland. It was a pretty good train ride - we got spots in the 'quiet zone' in nice comfy seats and it was good to see some of the Danish countryside flash past. It is a little unfortunate that I underestimated the distance to the hotel as we might have got a taxi instead of walking....

Yesterday morning we headed out to see the sights of Copenhagen by taking a canal tour. The historical buildings were interesting, as was some of masonry work on the bridges. The modern buildings were dramatic and very unusual.

 We then spent some time with the stories of Hans Christian Anderson at a small display.

In the afternoon we wandered towards the Royal Residences, and found that we could have a look at the nearly completed renovations for Mary & Fred's new digs. We were able to walk through many of the rooms in the beautiful rococo style palace which dates from 1749. The renovations involved restoring some of the older finishes (re-gilding etc), new murals (on quite a few walls) from modern Danish artists and updating some of the fixtures (such as the 70s style serving kitchen!). It is unfortunate that no photos were permitted inside - some parts were quite, quite beautiful, and once the renovations are completed there may be no opportunity for an ordinary person to see inside the walls.

At the end of the day Dr M headed for the airport while I (on the train) headed for the land bridge that joins Denmark to Sweden to take a few extra days traveling back to Stockholm from the south.

Legoland!

Friday afternoon we flew from Stockholm to Billund, Denmark - the home of Lego!

 Yesterday we joined the queue of little and big kids at the Legoland gates.

We roamed the park, looking at the models and riding on the attractions. It was a warm day (30 degrees?) - and the park was quiet (as every Scandinavian is off at their holiday house).

My favorite ride was one with pirate ships and water cannons - there were cannons on the boats and also around the outside of the ride - so everyone got to shoot people.Great fun on a hot day!

Dr M's favourite ride was the 'Power Builder' - where you programed the moves that your seat (mounted on the end of a robotic arm) would do. We thought we were being conservative with our selection, but we were upside down within 5 seconds of the ride beginning!  

Legoland balances out the tiny buildings by serving huge food & beverage options. Left is Dr M at our lunch at 'the knights table' - see my (clear) drink - that's 800ml!

For afternoon tea we each had a 'legoland vaffle' ice cream - 4 flavours of scoop ice cream, topped with soft serve, with some pink marshmallow fluff on top, some strawberry jam, and a choc covered coconut marshmallow. Quite ridiculous.

After a fun filled day we were clever enough to figure out how to catch a local bus 30km to the nearest train station, so that we could rail to Copenhagen.