Mousefriends

Denmark by Nature

We slept in the "guest house"

The last two days of our stay in Denmark we decided to spend with our friends in a summer house in Sjællands Odde, the northern most point of Sealand. The summer house is located in a wood, close to the beach.

After an inspirational day at Lejre the kids where quick to find them something to do. Branches were cut and turned into bows and arrows and on the beach the kids found flint and granite they could use to create some stone age tools from. No prefabricated toys with flashing lights, beeping sounds and extensive need for batteries  here. Those two days were very relaxed, spending time on the beach, something I'm usually not very good at.

Strawberry Fields Forever
Picking strawberries has always been something we've wanted to try, and now was the change. We had the time to do it and were at the right place at the right time. So off we went. At a nearby farm we were allowed to pick as many strawberries as we liked, only paying for those we took home. In a box that is, what we ate out in the field was free of charge. The weather was fantastic and it turned out to be just the perfect day.

"I only ate one, maybe two ... or twenty"

After eating strawberries till our stomach hurt, we went to Havnebyen where we bought some local smoked seafood. Outside we could sit down looking over the ocean towards Norway.

The following day we returned to Iceland where several exciting camping trips are waiting for us.

Hjörtur

Strawberry quadruplets

Kayaking in Copenhagen

Sight-seeing in the cities around the world usually includes a double decker and a loud speaker. In Copenhagen you’ve got some interesting alternatives. Certainly, Copenhagen by bike is an interesting experience with the great biking culture you’ll find there, excellent infrastructure where bikes have their own lanes and traffic lights. But one of my favorites is kayaking. Ole, better known as Kayak-Ole started offering Copenhagen sight-seeing tours on kayaks on the canals of the city sometime last decade and they’re gaining increased popularity. You get real close to the city and it’s life lanes in an interesting, alternative way.

For those with children or “less advanced” kayaking skills, you can sail in open tourist boats around the canals with a loud speaker telling you stories. We’ve taken our guests on that tour many times as it’s a tour anyone can enjoy and quite a cheap one too.

Since we weren’t really looking for sight-seeing around the city, having lived there for six years, we decided to spend the sunday afternoon kayaking at Amager Strandpark, a new man-made beach and waterplayground. There’s a place called Kajakhotellet where you can rent kayaks to play on, which we did. You might get your butt wet (as you can see ...), but it's worth it. I took the smaller kids with me for shorter rides which they really loved and we ended the day on jumping into the water. Well, at least some of them did :).

 

Hjörtur

Denmark

We went to Denmark for ten days, visiting old friends and playing tourists. It was Jokull Logi's first trip abroad, at the age of 6 weeks. Two of his older sisters were even younger when they went abroad for the first time, only eight and ten days old. Our youngest daughters first international flight wasn't until she was three weeks old though.

Denmark is a very family friendly country, but as the course of your Euro is, it’s not the cheapest one these days. We lived in Denmark for 6 years and wtayed at a friends house. There are not many friends that both can and are willing to invite a family of 7 into their home for 10 days. Thanks, dear friends. They even had a car with seven seats that we could borrow once in a while.

Copenhagen is very easy to get around without a car. The buses drive every 5 minutes on all major routes and they have an excellent train system. So a car is unnecessary in Copenhagen but may come in handy if you’re planning on visiting some of theme parks that are to be found on every other corner in Denmark. You see, there is not much to attract tourists in Denmark – nature wise. They have no mountains to climb, no gorges to cross and no rivers to sail. But they have a history and additional to that, they have created a number of great theme parks, some of them the oldest in the world. The most famous of them is Legoland which can now be found in Germany, UK and the US as well. We didn’t visit Legoland this time though, but we weren’t bored. Not at all. In the next few days I’ll posting some of our adventures in Denmark.

Hjortur