Denmark

There’s been an urgency since we arrived in Germany to do and see as much as we can before the end of September. Why? My oldest son, Joel, is leaving us, moving out, flying back the US to serve as a missionary for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints for two years. We will miss him so much, and he will miss so much of what we get to do and see in Europe while he’s away, although I don’t think he feels bad about that at all. He is really excited to start his mission, and we are excited for him.

Knowing he’d be leaving I asked him to think about where he really would like to go and what he really would like to see before he’s off. That same day we ran into an old friend here and she was telling us about her upcoming road trip to Denmark to see the Lego House and Joel’s eyes immediately lit up. This was the place he wanted to see!

Joel’s been a Lego fan since forever. My five brothers were huge Lego fans all growing up and I remember building and creating right along with them. It was a no brainer when I began choosing toys for my own kids that Lego took center stage. Joel has an incredible mind for engineering and creating and really took off with it. He loves a good Lego set, but can also build anything amazingly well just from his own mind. It always impresses me.

So, off to Billund, Denmark! The hometown of Lego, where it all started. It was about a 10-hour drive from where we live. I booked the perfect farmhouse for our stay, just 3km outside of Billund which gave us the easiest access to all we wanted to do and a beautiful place to come to at the end of the day to be together and relax.

The Lego House was the main thing on our agenda but we had a few days to spend so we added on Legoland Billund, as well as a historic farm and UNESCO Viking site (more on those coming).

We have been to one other Legoland in Windsor, England, and while we had a fun time there, we also knew not to expect a whole lot. It is not the same pace as a Disney park for sure. Legoland is fun and easy going and we spent the whole day from 10am-6pm and got to do and see almost everything we wanted to. The kids are all old enough now to do all the rides and attractions and I think the longest time we waited for anything was maybe 10 minutes. They have a “Reserve & Ride” pass you can buy to skip the lines at everything, but I am so glad I didn’t buy it. It costs almost double what we paid for entry tickets alone, and there were no lines at all anyway. It was lots of laughing and having so much fun the whole day. My favorite was the incredible Lego villages and scenes to explore. It was mostly replicas of towns in Denmark which made it even more fun to see.

The obligatory stand-in-front-of-the-sign photo. I love Brian’s half up half down socks, the holds in the knees of their pants, eyes, closed…it captures real life and I love it.

We packed a picnic for lunch that was an absolute bust! We had fruit, bread and cheese, and cured meats from a local grocery store which normally would be just perfect, but when I peeled open the cheese I about died 😆. It was STRONG and about knocked me over with its stinky diaper smell. We laughed and laughed. Some of us were brave enough to try it. I took one bite and couldn’t get my gag reflex to stop. And it took two rounds of hand sanitizer to get the smell off my fingers! So much for not being able to read Danish.

My one big fail was not bringing our own water into the park. I assumed we’d be able to buy some drinks easily enough, but the vending machines with water were selling for about $8 each. The park had Coca-Cola drink stations all over and you could use them as many times as you want with the special park cup. These were $15 each so I decided this would be the best and asked for 6 of them. The young man working at the counter was astonished, “YOU WANT 6?!?!” “Well, yes. There are 6 of us,” I said. And he shrugged and rang us up. I originally thought we could all share a few, but my kids back wash and Matt was adamant that we don’t want to share germs or sickness. So, 6 cups it was. It rang up to $85 with the exchange rate and now we have 6 collector Legoland Billund cups. The kids were super delighted to try all the drink combinations and I was happy they had zero sugar options. You could even select a “no bubbles” option.

It was perfect weather and a perfect day. We stopped at a grocery store to pick up frozen pizzas and salad for dinner. Grocery stores in Denmark…well, everything in Denmark…is relatively very expensive. Cooking at our farmhouse for our meals was something I am really glad we did. And I don’t know how they do it but the frozen pizzas were actually amazing with pesto and mozzarella…it was so good.

Back at the farmhouse we picked apples, played basketball, kids jumped on the trampoline and used the swing while I watched the sunset over the fields. It is such a beautiful place that looks like a painting at every turn. I loved it!

(Part 2, The Lego House, coming next)