Denmark and Sweden

August 03, 2022

Denmark and Sweden

Our last trip of the summer found us in the final country that touches Germany. One of my goals while living here was to try to visit at least every country that touches Germany. These are Poland, Austria, Switzerland, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, Czech Republic, and Denmark. Denmark was last on our list for it was a little bit harder to get to. I wanted to go to Copenhagen and as most of you know, airports are a HOT MESS this summer. We had already had a cancelled flight, a delayed flight and lost luggage. Plus we continued to hear the stories of continuous cancelled flights and lines that cause nightmares. I went ahead a priced flights anyways and found out that we would spend over $2,000 for a short flight. It wasn't worth it to us after spending a pretty penny in the UK. We decided we wanted to take the train, but the route was not direct to Copenhagen. Also, I didn't want to just do Copenhagen. I wanted to visit Billund, Denmark to see the Lego House, we wanted to drive around and hunt trolls near lakes and random locations in Copenhagen--all things that would be easier with our car. So off we went in our little Cooper and headed to Copenhagen! It was supposed to be an 11 hour drive, but with construction and some traffic jams, it ended up being around 14 hours. The kids may have argued and whined some, but we were still in good spirits when we arrived.

We had 2 different routes to choose from. We could take a ferry over or drive a little farther north to go over this bridge (actually 2 bridges that meet at an island in the middle) that connected the 2 land masses. It was a beautiful drive. We paid about 35 euro to cross on the bridge.

There was a lighthouse in the middle.

The evening we arrived, we went on a hunt for a restaurant and did some sightseeing. Copenhagen is such a cool city! The buildings were incredibly unique and I couldn't get enough of looking at them. As always, I took way too many pictures. In the one below, the Tivoli Gardens (amusement park) entrance is the red brick.

The next morning, we spent the day walking the whole city. I have no idea how many miles we covered, but our "dogs were barking" by the evening!

If you look closely in the water, there were statues of people at the bottom of the water. So weird! Later I researched that it is one of the least known works of art in the city. I was happy that we noticed them! It is actually a group of bronze statues called Agnete and the Merman. It supposedly is a merman and his 7 sons who are mourning for the mother/wife who left them for land.

The Marble Church

This mermaid is famous for Copenhagen. It is to commemorate Hans Christian Anderson and his Little Mermaid story. He is from Denmark as well.

You can see in this photo how many people were around the area taking pictures of the statue.

Eli informed us that this building across the way actually has a ski slope down the backside. He has a great memory and had seen it on a news channel for school.

FDR was there in Copenhagen!

We then took this walking bridge over to see the Church of our Savior with a beautiful spiral steeple. We also encountered Christiania which used to be a military base and later turned into a freetown when hippies took over it in the 70s. There was graffiti everywhere.

Here's one way to advertise furniture!

Instead of dinner (we ate a late lunch), we settled on a waffle stick (me), gelato (Embry), and churros (Evan and Eli).

Thomas Dambo, a famous artist from Denmark creates wooden trolls all over the world. I had always wanted to "hunt" for some of these trolls and what better place then to find some in the artist's home country? Back in 2016, the artist created six trolls made out of recycled wood in Copenhagen. He called them the Six Forgotten Giants. We packed out pretty early on Sunday, checked out of the hotel and went on a troll hunt. It was wonderful driving through Copenhagen on a Sunday morning for there were very few cars. We spent about 3 1/2 hours looking for the giants that were spread across the outskirts of the city (about 40 miles apart in some areas). We followed a blogger that had found parking for each one. We had such a fantastic time and this became my favorite part of the trip! The first forgotten giant we found was Sleeping Louis.

The next one we went to was Hilltop Trine. He was missing all of his hair (they used to be twigs). Someone put flowers on his head to make it look like hair, though!

Then we had a beautiful walk by the ocean to get to Oscar Under the Bridge. We also walked by some handsome cows.

There he is!

Next up, we drove and parked next to a lake to hunt for Little Tilde. I believe that this is the only troll that he has created with a tail.

The 5th one we found was a giant relaxing on a hill. His name is Thomas on the Mountain.

As we left that area, I snapped a shot of some wild flowers with red poppies. I kept seeing these beautiful flowers alongside the road. I felt like I was in England again!

We found our final one of the day. He may have been my favorite because the kids went over a small ditch/creek by climbing across his arm. This is Teddy Friendly.

While we were in Copenhagen, we hopped on a train and headed for Lund and Malmo, Sweden. We only stayed in Lund for a couple of hours and then took a 12-minute train ride to the bigger city of Malmo. I absolutely loved this city. The architecture was so neat to look at! We enjoyed just walking around the city, going in one of the famous churches, eating lunch, finding the castle and just taking pleasure in seeing yet another country. These loaded backwards, so we are in Malmo in the first set of pics. It starts with the end of our day and goes to our beginning.

The pics below are from the morning when we were in Lund, Sweden.

We ate baby chocolate cupcakes.

The cathedral was under construction, but you can still see its beauty.

On our final day in Denmark, we headed to Billund where Legos first began. We stayed in a the Lego Castle Hotel and Embry was so excited about it. There were legos everywhere to see and play with.

That evening we went to Lalandia for dinner (an activity complex) for Mexican food. It was tasty! Good Mexican food is hard to come by in Europe.

The next morning we headed to the Lego House. This was such a cool place! We played with Lego robots, made mosaics, created cartoon characters, designed fish for an aquarium, created a city, learned the history of the company, and checked out the vault of Legos from over the years. We then stopped by the gift shop and I am excited about my Lego Dots I purchased to add to my Creation Stations. I had never seen those before. Embry got some Legos, too, but the boys only wanted the really expensive sets.

Danny loved looking through the last few decades on this computer to find the Lego sets his family owned when he was a kid.

I loved the Lego flowers they had in the food court.

That afternoon, Danny took Eli and Embry to Legoland. Evan has already been (in CA) and the park isn't really geared too much towards teenagers so he was fine with not going. I actually wasn't feeling all that well and just wanted to nap at the hotel. For as expensive as Legoland is, I was happy to save the money with 2 of us not going as well! Both Eli and Embry have never been and they had a blast with Danny. This is actually the first ever Legoland and it was built in 1968.