07-08 The Original LegoLand

Up early this morning because we want to be to LEGOLAND when it opens. We have an 8 am train and then a bus to the Billund airport. Our hotel is right next door to the airport and within actual walking distance. Very convenient, because we have an early flight to Paris tomorrow. I wonder what's noisier, trains or planes. There's our hotel in the distance.

Too early to check in, so we just put our bags in the locked baggage/ironing room. We try to figure where's the path to walk to LEGOLAND. Well, there's a free bus right out the back door. Awesome.

Arriving at LEGOLAND, we post our picture at the entrance on Randy's FB post because he and Kezia are at LEGOLAND, Florida. Cool.

First we rode the newest ride, Ninjago. It's a 3-D dark ride where you shoot the bad guys using your hands. We rode it twice, improving our scores each time.

Next  it was over to the other side of the park and a Zierer coaster they installed in 2012. It's called the Polar Explorer and it's themed to penguins and polar bears. It's a fairly short coaster with some strong G's.

All the wait times so far have been posted at 10 minutes and have been less then 10 minutes. We rode Polar Explorer twice, once in the middle and once in the back. It's very smooth and it has that very cool drop like the roller coaster Thirteen at Alton Towers. When you go into the drop area the door closes behind you and there's a screen with a Lego man chipping at ice blocks and it falls down and so does your whole train.

Ice Pilots School is a Kuka Arm ride  There are no screens, just five arms. You program your flight, then they lock you in with over the head restraints, which are definitely needed. We hung upside down several times.  First you choose each persons height, then you choose the intensity  low, med, intense, then you choose five elements. There's no 3D glasses or screen. You're just out there on the arm swinging around.

Temple is themed to mummies in a temple. You shoot with attached guns like Buzz Lightyear at different color targets that get you different point amounts. This ride was too short. We rode it a second time.

The next coaster was Extreme Racers. It is a Mack wild mouse coaster built in 2002, an excellent wild mouse that had a mirror on a wall at the first sharp turn; nice effect.

Dragon coaster had excellent castle knights Lego animated scenes and then a very short coaster at the end.

Next we took pictures of a unique river raft, which had an elevator to lift the rafts to the top of the big splash ending.

The lunch place wasn't open yet, so we did Ghost Haunted House. It's a nice haunted house walk-through ending with a small drop tower ride at the end.

The Pirate Boat ride is a dark ride where they light each scene as you go by. It's a very good pirate ride with lots of animated pirate scenes inside.

Then we did the Tower Lego. At the top we had a great view of all the park. It's in mini land, so you get to see a lot of the mini buildings.

On the Monorail we get the front seat. And on the Train we took the back seat. Then we walked through and took pictures of the Star Wars Lego sets.

Next it was time for the  Lego 3-D movie in English (only in English twice today). It was boring.

The best thing about Legoland is the uniqueness and the cool factor of some of the displays and rides.

The rides close at 6pm, but the park stays open another 2 hours and everyone walks around the mini villages.

07-07 Hans Christian Andersen in Odense, Denmark

We walked over to the childhood home of Hans Christian Andersen. Their home was really small, but they were a poor family. They shared the right hand door with the family in the middle. A third family lived in the left 1/3 of the building. They lived in the right 1/3 of this house.

He lived here in this small two room section of the home with his mother and father. The table was his father's work bench; he was a shoemaker. His mother was a washer women, standing in the cold river, washing clothes all day.

There was a bed in the corner for his mother and dad and he slept on the settee.

This was their kitchen.

The lady here was very friendly and shared more information and answered our questions. There was no running water and the outhouse was out back. They went to the town square to draw the water.

Next we split a chicken burger, onion rings, a chocolate banana shake and a Pepsi Max at Burger Anarchy.

1pm, on to the other museum. We started with the film about his life. It showed every 15 min alternating from the Danish and English.

This museum, after the film, was mostly reading through his life. There were manuscripts and paper items he had cut out. Half way through his life you went through his grandparent's house where he was born.

Then we continued reading through his life.

Interesting fact is that HCA never "owned" a home of his own. His last flat in Amsterdam looked very nice though and they had a re-creation of it in the museum.

HCA wrote his last novel, Lucky Peter, at the age of 65 in 1870 and commented afterwards, "My writer's flame has got out, my time is over...". He died in 1875.

After we finished here, we walked around town. It's a very walk-able town.

Here's a building from 1646.

We walked in a couple of shops, then had dinner. We split a pizza at an Italian place.

Walking home, we bought some water for tonight and tomorrow morning (we still have one more chocolate muffin each for breakfast) and ice cream bars, which we ate while we walked to the train station for the last Hans Christian Andersen statue.

Entitled, The Trinity, it is HCA sculpture showing his three sides, The Shadow, The Improviser and The Travelling Companion.

Lastly we bought our train tickets for tomorrow. It will be an early day tomorrow, as we plan on catching the 8:10 am train to Billund, Denmark, where Legoland is.

07-06 Odense, Denmark Hans Christian Andersen's Hometown

We leave the apt for the last time.  Thank goodness, this had not been our best AirBnB. Bigger is NOT always better.

We board bus 14 about 1/2 block away to the Copenhagen Central train station and then the train for 75 min to Odense.

Unfortunately, this is the nicest day since we arrived here. We get two seats with a table, facing two empty seats, with our two big suitcases over head. Arriving in Odense, we walk to our hotel, Cabinn Odense Hotel, which is in a building on the end of the train station.

Checking in at noon, we got into our room and dropped off our luggage and we were on our way to see a new town in Denmark. That's how a hotel check-in aught to go. Walk up to the front desk, tell them your name, they find your reservation and boom they have all the correct info about you and what you want (4 minutes tops). It's not rocket science here folks.

We walked down the street toward Hans Christian Andersen's boyhood home and found a nice cafe for lunch. I have a grilled piece of chicken and a small bowl of au gratin potatoes. Delicious and just the right amount. Pat had BBQ ribs and mashed potatoes. He's in heaven.

We decided it was such a beautiful day we would do our outdoor walks and do the museums tomorrow, because there's a good chance of rain. We stopped at both museums just to make sure we weren't going to be missing anything if we didn't do them today. Found out the time of the play in the outdoors and it was just starting when we got there, so we stopped to watch.

It was a good performance involving lots of adults and kids. We didn't understand because it was in Danish, but we know most of the stories, so we enjoyed it.

Now to start our walk. They have red feet painted on the ground for us to follow and we downloaded an app that tells us about each site. We followed them around town learning about Hans Christian Anderson and his life in Odense.

There was a plaque on the ground at each location that included what it was in a couple of languages and the location on the map. This is the church where his mother and father were married and where his dad is buried when he was just 14 years old.

The cobblestone streets around his boyhood home are still very narrow and the houses are small. It looks very close to what it looked like when he lived there.

Walking through the park Karen spotted a boat and it reminded her of a Jungle Cruise boat. We found out where it went and bought tickets for a one hour cruise and then had dinner at a cafe right by the load area while we waited for the boat to come back.

After a dinner of a cheese and ham panini we boarded our boat for a nice relaxing cruise down past the zoo and back. There were some things hanging in the trees that had to do with Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tales along the way. We went by some large houses. There were pedal boats that also cruised this river.

After the boat ride we continued finding the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tales statues like this one depicting the Emperor's New Clothes.

We stopped at the grocery story and got some water, muffins for breakfast (no breakfast at this hotel) and some ice cream bars. We ate the ice cream bars on the walk back to our hotel.