Sunday July 9th we took a 3 1/2 hour train ride from Copenhagen to Aarhus, Denmark. Copenhagen is part of the island Zealand and we've now moved over to the main peninsula of Denmark called Jutland. Aarhus is the second largest city in Denmark and located on the Bay of Aarhus which leads into the North Sea. It's a fairly small city and the portion we are staying in is made up of cobblestone streets lined with shops and restaurants and apartment buildings. The locals are hanging out all day shopping and lounging. There doesn't seem to be too many tourists in this area, at least not Americans. But not to worry, everyone still speaks English. I love it that they speak to me in Danish first, as if I'm a Dane! Slight satisfaction that I don't scream American tourist. I really didn't have any plans for this part of our trip, it was kind of thrown together out of a need to fill this week. But I love wandering these streets and not worrying about getting lost.

Our Airbnb is located on the second floor of an apartment building on a shop-filled street. Bakery across the street, wine bar and a coffee shop below us. Not super busy, but still enough people milling about to make it interesting. We have two bedrooms, and two living rooms. The two living rooms thing is coming in really handy with Paul working, he gets one of them and we get the other to hang out in. I've turned the window ledges over the street into window seats and I love sitting up there watching the world go by down below. We also have a back balcony that looks out onto other buildings. The furniture in this place is old antique stuff that just brings back memories of my grandparents places, with a modern kitchen and good wifi. ;) The first night we slept with all the windows, and balcony door open to let in the breeze, but unfortunately the darn seagulls were loud as heck and two guys had the audacity to talk really loudly in the shared back courtyard and drag garbage cans out at 3:15 in the morning! We were all very grumpy. Night 2 we shut all the doors and windows and it was much better.

Kyle playing chess with someone in a game shop down the street.

On Monday July 10th it was raining pretty hard so we decided to check out an art museum. We are not museum people and definitely not art museum people, but this museum had a Rainbow Bridge on the roof, and that drew my attention. The rainbow bridge was really cool, the rest of the museum was really weird. Some of it disturbing. I did not take pictures of the weird stuff, so I won't be sharing that, just the cool Instagram worthy pics of the rainbow bridge.

Inside staircase of the art museum
Tuesday July 11th we grabbed some city bikes, same App as in Copenhagen, so that was nice. We have so many Apps from public transportation and what not for each of these cities, I have to go through and delete them all at some point. ha ha! Anyway, Donkey Republic is the App for the city bikes here, pay as you ride or a day pass or some sort of membership. We ended up paying $10 for just under 2 hours for each bike. Not bad. That goes into our transportation budget for each city. (But in this case I was thinking it could be used under the Activity Budget as well. ;)) We rode south down the coast a bit to an Infinite Bridge, basically just a dock built in a circle over the water. It's cool though, a different idea.

Then we walked to a nature preserve where there are lots of deer and wild boars (they were in a different fenced in area though, so they couldn't maim us!) If you haven't noticed, I love animals, and any interaction I can have with them, I'm certainly lured in easily. The kids and Paul had no idea what we were going to, I just told them we were going into a park. We walk in and a dozen deer approach us looking for food, and luckily I brought carrots. We could feed the deer and pet them, most of them were not shy. Then off in the distance you'd see a mom, dad and baby deer hiding out in the woods, staying far from the humans. This was a free nature preserve 54,000 Acres large with wild Sika and Fallow deer, they are not tagged, but then again, they cannot escape the fenced in area. There are signs stating what is acceptable food to feed them and what is not. It was so cool being around all these deer walking around this big park. The boars were in a separate section and not as easily seen, although we could see some babies in the distance. We all loved this little outing.

The antlers were so soft!!
Wednesday July 12th we went to one of those living museums. This one is called Den Gamle By and it is a history of Denmark from the early 1600's up until 2014. It looks like a village and you walk down the streets and into all these buildings. The earlier buildings are craftsmen like wood workers and candle makers and a woolen mill, iron works, etc. Old timber framed houses which were famous in old Denmark. You could see replicas of houses and they gave you the history of that house and the family that lived there in their age. As we moved through the years, there were more shops and more modern houses. Eventually coming to the 2000's where they had a 7-11, a pizza place, a Blockbuster Video store, Dansk bank, etc. They also had a replica home from a family with two mom's, showing their Pride, the house was aptly named the Rainbow House. Other things around the museum were horse and carriage rides, old time games, a place to make your own flatbread from dough-you got to cook it on an open fire and eat it. Apparently it wasn't any good though. We all had fun making it, but as I'm gluten free I couldn't eat it, and they boys and Paul said it wasn't good. Our favorite part were the old timey games. There was a lady milling about the courtyard who was quite happy to explain how the games worked. We all really enjoyed the museum, although the boys got sick of going into every building, which is what I wanted to do. ;)
Taking after their Bopa and rolling out the bread dough!
Cooking it over an open fire.

Stilts were fun! I did well on them!
I think this street was the 1970's
Braydon and Kyle pulling themselves across a pond in a boat.

Thursday July 13th we left Aarhus to go south to Billund. We had to take a 45 minute train ride then a 45 minute bus ride. The bus ride was a bit crazy. First off, it was very crowded with tourists heading to Billund, luckily we all got seats, but separate from each other. There was a very upset baby on board who screamed the entire time, it started to rain and the skylights on the bus were open, so the rain was getting people, including Paul, wet. One guy behind me decided he was going to close the skylight, he stood up and pulled those little red cords, (which most of us know anything red, you do not pull!) They were the emergency release cords and the skylight disengaged itself from the bus and almost flew off, the guy quickly realized what he had done and grabbed the skylight, now rain is pouring inside the bus and this poor guys is getting soaked attempting to hold on and reattach the skylight window. It totally reminded me of a time when back in the day I had a 1984 Saab with a moon-roof that you had to remove physically to open, I had the bright idea to have a friend remove this as I was driving down the freeway going 70 mph, the wind took the glass and it flew behind me and shattered into a million pieces, luckily there was not a car behind me, but I did have to endure a hole in my roof for many weeks until I could have a new moon roof installed. Back to the bus; Finally the skylight was reattached and a girl decided to go ask the bus driver to shut them!
Anyway, we were very glad to get off that bus when we arrived to the birthplace of Lego.
Ole Kirk Kristiansen was the inventor of Lego and he lived in Billund, Denmark, he founded the Lego Group in 1932, the company has since been passed down through the generations, father to son and is still owned by a grandchild of the founder. The Lego House is a museum or if you will, a celebration of Lego. It has numerous interactive exhibits encouraging everyone to play and build and create with Lego. They've included technology, one such exhibit is to make a fish or some sea creature out of Lego, put it under a camera and your creations appears in a big aquarium on a screen where it swims with all the other creations. I made reservations for us to have lunch in the Mini Chef restaurant, which is a fun concept where they give you a packet of Lego bricks and you make your dinner order with them, each piece corresponds to a menu item. You are allowed to choose one item from each color on the menu. It is a simple menu with only 4-5 choices in each category, but the food was surprisingly very good. Once you build your meal, you put your Lego creation into a machine on your table, it scans it, shows you your choices then a little cartoon skit plays to simulate Lego mini figures making your dinner. Eventually the screen tells you your food is ready and you get up and watch your meal coming down the conveyor belts to Robots where they push the food towards you. The food is served in Lego bricks bento boxes. All in all it was a unique, interactive and fun, and delicious meal. Worth the exorbitant amount of money we paid for it! The boys and Paul, who is an official AFOL (just learned this acronym) Adult Fan of Lego, really enjoyed the museum. I thought the Lego House was really cool, but I'm not really into building with them, so I just walked around and looked at all the cool builds.
Lego was born in Billund Denmark, but Lego also made Billund a destination on the map. Otherwise, there's not much around here, not even a train station. Yes, this is all Lego!
Lego waterfall was my favorite-so cool and big!
Lunch boxes being presented by the robots.
Paul racing his Lego car down the track.
So the hotels here are themed hotels centered around children. Legoland is here, Lego Hotel, Castle Lego Hotel, and Lalandia-a waterpark holiday house resort. We chose to stay at the latter. For those in England, this is very much like Centerparks, for those in the US, it's like if Great Wolf Lodge had little cabins to stay in instead of a hotel. The inside of Lalandia has a big Aquadome, waterpark, bowling alley, mini golf, a roller skating rink, tubing, trampolines, restaurants, bars, and a supermarket. It has that always dusk feel to it, like Vegas does. We enjoyed many activities Thursday night, it was a busy day! Being silly roller skating. It had been a long time since the boys and I had worn quads-we are inline skates kind of people. ;)
That Vegas feel, always dusk inside Lalandia.
Braydon had fun doing double flips on the trampoline things.
More animals to pet-they had goats on the property.
Friday July 14th, we spend the entire day at the waterpark and the other activities that the resort had to offer, it was exhausting, so we bought some microwaved dinners at the supermarket and went back to chill out in the holiday house while Paul worked. I actually don't have any pictures of the waterpark, unfortunately. One note, the modesty level in Europe is so different from the US. People just aren't as concerned with being naked here. The locker rooms were evident of that, people just walking around naked, chatting naked, blow drying their hair naked. No cares whatsoever.
Anyway, off to another country the next day.

Saturday July 15th, as I mentioned earlier, Billund is only on the map because of Lego and there is no train station there, so we had to take a regional bus to get to the train station 1 hour away. The bus went through so many fields and a couple small villages, it was interesting. We got to the train station and had some time to kill before our train, so we grabbed some sandwiches and sat at a picnic table outside the station. I was super happy because they had GF bread, and it was decent! We had a 3 plus hour train ride to Hamburg and unfortunately didn't have seat reservations. We told the boys that once we got on and put our luggage in a rack, to just find a seat and sit. Well they didn't want to ask people if they could sit next to them, so they opted to stand. Paul and I found seats. The boys ended up sitting on the ground between the train cars, right in front of the doors. Stubborn kids! But I remember doing that several times when I backpacked across Europe in my 20's, it was fine for me then, it's fine for my boys now. They were doing track work, so we had to get off at one station in Hamburg and take a metro to the main train station to catch our next train to Bremen, Germany. It was a long day, but luckily the hotel we stayed in was right next to the train station, so we didn't have far to walk. Of course the area around the train station is a little sketchy and very busy. After checking in and changing/relaxing for a bit, we walked to the old town square for dinner. We ate in a cool old wine cellar restaurant and all enjoyed our German meal. Afterwards in the square there was live music playing, so Paul and I grabbed a drink and we all sat outside listening to the music. It was a gorgeous night. Paul and I had a suite with two separate rooms.
The boys had their own suite as well.
Sunday July 16th we walked around Bremen exploring the city. Unfortunately we found Bremen, outside of the old town square and the Schnoor Quarter, to be dirty and it just looked like no one cared about it. There were some streets that had very nice row houses and tree lined streets, that were covered in garbage and the lower portions of the houses/buildings painted in graffiti. We did come across a fair and a street/food market along the river, so that was fun. But overall we were not super impressed with Bremen. It was a stopover point for us, since you have to stop between Denmark and Amsterdam, otherwise it's a really long travel day. The Schnoor quarter though was really cute. It is Bremen's oldest neighborhood and the narrow alleyways are lined with 15th and 16th century houses and shops. The only problem, it's not very big, we walked it in a matter of minutes. (Well actually longer than that because we got sidetracked at a candy store watching someone make candy!) That night we ate dinner at a Tapa's Restaurant. A self-build area at the fair!
An example of graffiti on buildings on a what would be nice street.
For some reason this statue is one of Bremen's must see attractions.

Then the next morning we left early for our 7th country. Stay tuned for our final installment!