Bakken Amusement Park

The amusement parks in Copenhagen have opened for the season. The Sunday before last we rode our bikes on the 15 min bike ride to Bakken, the oldest amusement park in the world, situated in a park near our house. http://www.bakken.dk/english The kids both loved it. Wyatt was frustrated that he couldn't go on too much.

 

We went on the ladybug kiddie roller coaster first and, while Wyatt says he had fun, if you ask him if he wants to go again he will quickly say No.

 

We met our friends the Shiels family there.

 

I should not have taken Wyatt on these bumper cars. There was a little boy that was after us and kept running into us hard. I thought Wyatt was going to fly out of his seat belt.

 

 Our friends had to leave and we were out of cash to join her, so Raegan was brave and went on several rides by herself...she had a great time.

We got Raegan a season's pass and hope to go here every weekend we are in town.

 

Over the bridge to Malmo, Sweden

Last Saturday we loaded up our double jogging stroller and boarded a train for quick ride over the Oresund bridge to Malmo, Sweden. The weather was beautiful (this is my new version of beautiful...in Austin I would say sunny and 70s is the definition, but here I am happy with sunny and 50s...).

 

On the train...

 

Malmo is a very nice pretty city that is similar to Copenhagen but smaller and less crowded. We had a relaxed agenda and hit the sights we thought the kids would enjoy as well.

 

First we stopped by St. Peter's Cathedral. The kids were a bit loud so we made it quick.

 

 

 

 

Then we went to the Great Square where the kids enjoyed playing around the statues.

 

 

 

Walking over to Malmohus Slot (castle) we passed through a really cool square with restaurants/cafes...including TGI Fridays! We have actually seen TGI Fridays in each city we've been to here. I would not pay the $10 a plate they charge in the US for this food, much less the Copenhagen/Malmo/Oslo rates of about $40/plate. Just thought it was interesting....

 

 

 

 

These are the large gardens around the castle.

 

 

 

 

What you can't tell from this picture (and I failed to capture it on video) is how mean this goose below is. It was being fed bread from people and would hiss at people between feedings. Very aggressively hiss and chase. And it was mean to the other geese as well. We found it very entertaining.

 

Here we have arrived at the Malmohus castle/fortress which dates back to the 1300s...with moat and all. We went in and toured some of the castle and went into a little museum inside which strangely was an animal museum and a little aquarium. Fortunately the kids liked it!

 

 

 

Next we took a longer walk closer to the coast to see the famous Turning Torso building. It's the tallest building in the area - it's an apartment house. Very interesting architecture.

 

 

 

Malmo is known for it's beautiful parks. It has 20 themed playgrounds around the city. We went to one right next to the Turning Torso. I don't recall the exact name of it since it was in Swedish but the theme was the sun. Raegan actually went down one of the big slides out of the big sun and was surprised by how fast it was.

 

 

The park was a few minutes from the coast so we walked over and found lots of great areas to hang out by the water. We sat there and had a couple beers while the kids played.

 

In the background here you can see the Oresund bridge we crossed.

 

No words really to describe this one. This guy was doing his thing in the middle of the Great Square when we walked back through on the way back to the train. Ron of course had to take a picture.

 

We had to stop and check out a pub before we boarded the train back home...

 

 





The hazard of being the little brother at your big sister's playdate

Wyatt was quite happy Raegan and her friend wanted to include him in their dress up play during their play date!

 

Weekend at Lalandia

The weekend before last we rented a car and drove about 2 hours to the southeast coast of Denmark to a resort called Lalandia. There is a lot to do there that is indoors, something we needed since it was misty and foggy and cold all weekend. They have an indoor water park called Aquadome.  Here there are warm pools, water slides, a great kiddie pool and hot tubs. Raegan went on a few water slides and loved them. She got a little scared when Ron took her on a tall one and they went under at the bottom but she handled it pretty well. Ron was crazy and went on a water slide that had non-warmed water and took him outside. No thanks! His skin was freezing when he got back.

The kids loved the indoor playland called Monkey Tonkey land. The huge slide was their favorite. They also had a huge ball pit and big area for building with big and small Legos.

 

We took the kids ice skating also - Raegan was really looking forward to this. Wyatt also insisted "He DO it!" So we figured why not. They gave Wyatt these little double blade skates to put on his shoes but Raegan got real skates. Wyatt lasted about 2 minutes but Raegan did great! They had construction cones for the kids to learn with and by the end of the day she got to where she could skate on her own with the cones (versus me holding her and sort of pushing her). She talks about this a lot and wants to go skating again.

They had indoor trampolines as well with BOTH kids wanted to do.

 

 

Raegan's other favorite thing to do at Lalandia was pretend she was princess at the indoor princess castle. Wyatt's role varied from being the boy in jail to being the prince. :-)

Here are a few from the Danish clown show. None of it was in English but the kids still enjoyed it. Clearly, Wyatt just had a blue sucker!

And Ron could not resist taking a picture of this guy...

 


We ended the trip taking a detour on the way home. We saw a sign for a fjord so we (thought) we followed signs for it to the coast. While we did in fact find a fjord, it was not the original one we saw being advertised off the highway - this was a bit anti-climatic. It turns out fjords are not all big cliffs into the ocean, they can be low elevation inlets of water as well and just look like a normal beach. But Raegan enjoyed starting a shell collection.

The countryside in Denmark is very pretty - here are some photos of our drive back. Also included what our back seat looked like. Baxter was the one who missed the space of the SUV the most. He may look it here but this lasted 10 seconds - he just could not get comfortable.