From Lego to Noir

Lucas is fascinated with all of the vehicles you can see outside our hotel window. It keeps him entertained for a long time as Grandpa educates him on the boats. He's adding lots of words to his vocabulary on this trip, most of them in English (that's Lucas learning, not Grandpa.) This morning we went on our first Swedish adventure. We took the tram to Skansen, which is on another island, to see a historical village and children's zoo. It's like a large outdoor museum--think Lower Fort Garry. It's a Saturday morning here and we couldn't believe the lineups to get onto the tram. We had to wait for the third vehicle to arrive before we could even think about hopping on. The tram is their newest form of transportation. If you board the last car on the tram there's a special area to accommodate baby strollers. Our ride came to an abrupt halt though, because the tram apparently ran out of power. Everyone had to evacuate and walk the rest of the journey. It...

Life with a toddler has been so busy, we're behind in our posts by a few days. It was an unexpectedly sunshine-filled day on Thursday so we walked across much of the city. David and I had such a lovely day! We loved Copenhagen and highly recommend it to all of you. We wove our way through the embassy district on the way to the  Little Mermaid statue. The grounds of the Kastellet showed off some great views of the city.  David and I enjoyed a quick trip into the Danish Museum of Design which would be worth an in-depth investigation in the future. There is so much intriguing architecture throughout the whole city-- both classic and modern. We are proud of ourselves--we clocked sixteen kilometres of walking just on Thursday. Jon has been an excellent tour leader. We spent the afternoon at Tivoli Gardens -- it was a bonus to find something that appealed to everyone's interests, all in one place. Lucas loved the playground and the seesaw and climbing up the mountains with his...

We spent today exploring downtown Copenhagen. City Hall is a significant-sized building, centred on a large square. The area bustles with the tourist set. We hiked past Tivoli Gardens which we expect to visit tomorrow. We walked by at 11:00 and it was teeming with hundreds of school children queuing up and anxious for a day of celebrations. Tivoli Gardens is an amusement park and gardens and it is the second-oldest amusement park still operating in the world. It is unusual to have such a feature in a downtown location. The screams of all of the participants echoed through the downtown as they rode the roller coasters and went up and down on the carousel. The Christiansborg Palace, the Parliament building and the Supreme Court building were our next focus. Lucas was entranced by the Horse Parade that greeted us as we first entered the grounds. Bollards  electronically controlled the access of service vehicles into the Palace and Parliament grounds and it was fascinating to see h...