Vejle, Århus, and Odense, Denmark (Post #17)
Just so you know…Denmark is made up of three large land masses and many smaller islands. Jutland is the largest land mass with the capital, Århus. Funen is the smallest land mass with the capital Odense, and the medium sized land mass is Zealand with Denmark’s capital city Copenhagen. We traveled for 12 hours on Tuesday, June 21st, taking 3 trains and a bus to get to our hostel in Vejle, a small town on the land mass of Jutland. If we had more time we would tell you about all our travel tales but needless to say, we are still learning how the trains and bus systems work and one important lesson we’ve learned is to NOT arrive in a small town later at night because everything will be closed, you’ll have no way of getting a map or figuring out where to go or how to go where you should eventually end up (did that make sense?) We have also had some communication issues which resulted in a few mishaps and we are constantly changing money and trying to figure out exchange rates. On this one day, Tuesday, we paid for things using Euros, Czech Kron, and Danish Kroner. Ah, the life of world travelers!
Anyway, our main purpose for taking the train from the Netherlands through Germany to Vejle, Denmark was so that we could go to Lego Land. This was an incredible experience! We were kids for a day, going on all the rides and looking at the miniature towns made out of hundreds of thousands of legos. Although you may not be able to tell by the picture, everything is made out of legos and the bus is only about a foot long and a 3 inches high. Here’s a picture
The next day we took an hour train ride from Vejle to Århus and looked at some cool churches and one even had a creepy crypt below the alter. Here’s a picture
A funny thing we saw here was a woman sunbathing on the church lawn in her bra – very classy!
After spending the afternoon in Århus we took the train to Odense. After checking in to our hostel we went into the city center. The city is very old and has cobble stone pedestrian streets. Since we were under budget, we decided to treat ourselves to a nice meal. We ate at a Mexican place where Michele ordered a vegetarian burrito and got sort of like Chinese stir fry inside the burrito. Very interesting. We had a few drinks there and our Mexican meal with drinks ended up being $77. We then noticed a large crowd of people outside a bar and decided to go in and have a few drinks. This bar served minibrew (like American microbrew) beer. The beer was absolutely fabulous and the bartenders there, Peter and Rasmus, were very kind to us. Rasmus spoke perfect English but had never been to the US. We hope he takes us up on our offer to come visit us some day (yea, we know we don’t have anywhere to live right now but we mean when we do have a home). Peter and Rasmus gave us several free drinks so that we could try different types of beers from different countries and even served us a free sausage. Our favorite beer was from Belgium. It tasted like cherry champagne. Yum! Picture of Michele at the bar
The next day we took a bus ride for 1 hour and 20 minutes to see the Egeskov castle and grounds. This place was beautiful and the family that has owned it for many years collected all kinds of things such as cars, motorcycles, and airplanes. We walked along the tree tops on a series of bridges and went through a bamboo maze. We also saw a peacock walking around the grounds and there were many different kinds of gardens and animals (deer park, bird area, and even some hyper active squirels running around and around in a cage). Here is a picture of us in front of the castle
We leave on the train for Copenhagen soon but we’ll upload more photos later.
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Tags: Category #5: Denmark
Michele Harmon
It all sounds very interesting. Especially the lagos. Michael’s first lego set was a very complex locomotive (bought in Germany). He got it when he was about 3 or 4. We never did get that one put together, as it was too complex for Dad!
You mentioned you were under budget, but spent $77.00 on one meal. WOW! What a budget!!
Michael does look as though he is losing weight. It won’t hurt him!
Enjoy!
RNPriddy
I showed the picture of the beautiful town to my kids and they about fell over. “Dad; that is a Lego town.You really do have Alzheimers”
What a great trip you two are having. All your trail running friends are jealous.
Ed