Hangin' in Denmark

 Today was more of a laid back day.  We headed back in to Fredericia to check out the walking streets and hopefully do some souvenier shopping.  It was more of a shopping district for locals than it was for tourists, but it was still fun.

There were several stone balls as decoration in a square.  Kadence tried to pick one up!  It wasn't going to budge.

Austin, Edward, and Kadence wait on a stoop while the adults are looking in a store.

Most Danish homes do not stand out from their neighbors in anyway, so it was funny to see this house with a sign on it that said in Danish "House with feet".

That evening Alice had planned a BBQ for her family, her sister Birgit and a cousin of hers and his wife.

 

 

That night we went for a dip in the pool.  Bryson swam most days, but David, the babies and I only did a couple of times.

 

 

Bryson tried on a new hairstyle after swimming.  It's called his towel-dried look.  I like it.

 

Ribe, DK

 We spent a day in a wonderful little town called Ribe.  We chose the town because it was near a Viking Center and is famous for being the oldest existing town in Denmark.  The old town had beautiful cobble stone streets with beautiful old buildings.  We walked down a designated walking street that was lined with where we shopped for souveniers of our visit.

We headed to the Ribe Cathedral.  Bryson was convinced that there were clues to Denmark's national treasure hidden in the church somewhere.  He just had to touch the right places and turn the stone on the wall... 

No treasure this time.  Then we walked to the top of the Tower of the Cathedral. It was a long way up through seemingly rickety stair cases.

We went up past the clock workings, the cathedral bells, and just when we thought we must be at the top, there was another set of stairs, and another set of stairs, and another...
But it was worth it.  Here is Mia and family at the top.

 In the picture above, you can see there was an inner metal railling and an outer wood railing.  At one point Austin sat down and tried to slip under the metal railing.  I yanked him back out.  By the time I had him out, Kadence had seen him and she had layed on her belly and was shimmying under the railing, so I ran over and pulled her back.  I turned around and Austin was on his belly going under.  Twins!  Needless to say they were held the rest of the time we were on the roof.

This was on our way back down one of the sets of stairs.

We had a late lunch. We were split between hamburgers and greek gyros.

And onto the Ribe Viking Center.  It was a living museum, so there were "Vikings" living there and we got to see how they lived.  There was a weapons demonstration about to start so we headed there first.  The boys got to try some Viking swords and shields.

Bryson was dressed ready for battle in heavy chain mail, then had to run to the bridge and back to see how hard it was to go into battle in full protection.

Then Ethan and Bryson got to try the long bow archery range.

 

We walked around the museum seeing how the Vikings slept, worked, shopped, and farmed.  Here is Edward bowing to Chief Ethan in one of the long houses.

And Ethan bowing to Chief Edward.

One of the museum gurus played a Viking tic-tac-toe game with Ethan.

Here we are out in front of the museum by the statues of the three Fates and their threads of life.

 

Fredericia

The main reason we went to Denmark at this time was so that we could experience it with Alice and see the places where she lived and grew up.  This day was full of wonderful sites and information from Alice's youth.  Fredericia is a coastal town in Denmark.  Alice's family moved here when she was a baby because her father was part of the resistance during WWII and his factory had just been blown up by the resistance (he was possibly involved in the bombing).  He had to go into hiding, so the rest of the family stayed for a year with family, then relocated to Fredericia.  The old part of town is fortified with ramparts and a moat that were built in the 1700's.  We parked just inside the ramparts and walked up along the top of the ramparts to see the parts of the city that Alice remembered from her childhood.

This is the Gymnasium (High School equivalent) where Alice attended and graduated as viewed from the Ramparts that she walked along to get to school.

Along the walking path on the top of the ramparts, there have been some activities added including some swings.  This was a fantastic picture of Edward swinging.

At the foot of a rampart and about 20 feet from an old WWII bunker, we stopped at a park for a play break.  The bunker has been converted into a museum showing what life was like during WWII for the people of Denmark.
Austin going down a slide at the park.

 
Everyone loved the zipline at the park.  Here is Ethan, Edward, Bryson, Kadence, and John.  Kadence was reluctant, but brave.

This is a view down one of the streets of
Fredericia.  The tile roofs and inset windows for attic rooms are standard for most homes in Denmark.  Some homes out in the country still have thatched roofes that I find fascinating.

The big sister and the little sister walking along the mote.

There was a fun activity center across the mote from Alice's high school for the "big kids".

To get to the activity center, we had to cross the mote on a floating bridge that was made to move up and down as you walked along it.  Everyone had fun crossing it.

This is the house Alice grew up in. It has had an addition on the left since she lived there.  The house actually sits on top of the rampart on the north end.  The row of windows on the side is the large room that Alice shared with her two sisters when she was young.  When she was a teenager her bedroom was in the basement (you can just see the top of the window by the slide) where she claimed she could sneak out.  David's brother, Jon, was with us and he talked about how he lived with his Grandparents here for a year in the 8th grade.  He claimed that the bushes out front were much higher and you couldn't see much of the house from the road. 

A short walk from the house you go down a hill to the beach.

We got polsars (hotdogs) and fries at a snack shop on the beach.  Below from left to right Austin, me, Kadence, John, Jon, Alice, Ethan, Mia, Edward, and Bryson. David photographer.

Then we played at the beach while Alice, Jon, and David went to get the cars since they were on the other side of town.  Bryson helped his nephews on and off the dock.

They collected dead jelly fish from near the beach and lined them up along the near end of the dock, then got on the dock and dropped dead jelly fish on other jelly fish on the far side of the dock.  They claimed they were giving the live jelly fish a warning.

Austin was content for almost an hour filling the ocean one rock at a time.  Then the boys brought him a stick and he threw that in, but he decided he actually wanted it, so he had to wade in after it.

Ethan with a jelly fish.

Kadence loves to feel the texture of things which means she squeezes everything to feel how it squishes, breaks, or crumbles in her fingers.  This makes eating really messy most of the time.  We call her Kadence the Crusher.  She spent a lot of time at the beach picking up handfuls of dry sand and running it through her fingers, then going to the wet sand and seeing how it was different.  Bryson knew exactly what would happen if he placed a jelly fish in front of her.

It was gruesome.  Jelly fish after jelly fish victims of the Crusher.

That evening we collected for a family picture before dinner. 
Back row: Jonna (her husband Frank had already come and gone before we got there), Jonna's Max, John, Mia, Bryson, Me, David, Jen, Jon.
Middle row: Ethan, Edward, Alice, Kadence, Austin, Jen's Fred and Tommy.
Front row: Jonna's Emma and Zach, Jen's Betsy and Katie

 

Legoland Denmark

Legos are originally Danish and so is Legoland.  This was the first one.  We went with Mia, John, Ethan, Edward, and David's brother, Jon.  David's sisters were there with their families as well.

Ethan and Edward with Lego treasure.

 We went on a fire truck ride where we had to drive a fire truck to the fire then put out the fire.  Our team was awesome!

 

Then we saw the penguins.

We went for a buffet lunch in the castle and the restaraunt had the coolest play place ever.  Huge foam legos were a big hit.  Ethan built a huge tower.

Here's John and Austin on a lego boat ride.

And Mia and Edward.

 
Ethan rode with his Grandpa (the photographer).

By some miracle of fate the babies actually fell asleep and had a nice nap.

We stopped for a snack and Grandpa was showing Edward how he could feed him without looking and it would look like Edward had man hands.

Legoland had a really great aquarium.  It had sharks and all different kinds of beautiful fish big and small.

Ethan and Edward even got to hold a crab.

Bryson to went off with his Uncle Jon and his cousin for some big kid rides.  His favorite was one one where you program what moves you want on the ride, then you are fastened into a huge robotic arm that reads your card and gives you your ride.  It was very cool.

After a stop for some ice cream and the gift shop, we headed back to the vacation house.  What a fun-filled day!