Wednesday: day 1 of the tour

Today went by so quickly.

We started out with some welcome speeches.  Interesting, but not super profound.  They handed out their business cards, which are little mini-figures with their information printed on the shirts.  (Note: not all employees get such business cards, just the special ones.)

Then we went to the employee museum.  We had a tour of the history of how Lego started and got to see select sets.  There wasn't really enough time to do this properly, but we did get a pretty good idea of everything.

Then we went into the vault, where they have one copy of every set that has been made (with a few exceptions).  It was rather tight.

People were going a bit crazy over sets from their childhood.  However, I don't remember having any real sets per se, just a bucket or two of creative and a bunch that we had found at a garage sale.  I found them.

Ben was very excited to find the monorail.

We also found set #1.

Then we had a traditional Danish lunch.  Dark bread with fixings on top.  We later learned that there are five varieties and only five.  They do not experiment or change things up.

After a short session on molds, especially the ones that they recently found in the ground, it was time to go to the developer's building.  No pictures were allowed in there.  We had a presentation on the Saturn V rocket, the Boost Droids, Steamboat Mickey, and creation of new pieces.  At the beginning of several of the sub-presentations we were asked how many people had at least two copies of it...because if they had just asked how many people had it everyone would have raised their hands.

We decided to go to the Lego House store after that.  We picked up the unique-to-Billund sets but are waiting until tomorrow to get anything else.

After a short break we had dinner with the designers.  The designer at our table has been working on the hidden figures sets.  He was nice, but a bit of a downer.  He enjoys his job here, but doesn't like putting Legos together any more.  The town is safe and education is good, but there's not much to do.  Hidden Figures stuff is good, but the app development is missing some components that just got left out due to time.  Anyway, he was interesting to talk to but also did not make me want to come work for Lego.

These were the guys from the first two designer presentations.  They're quite hilarious.

Then we got to the last event of the night: design something.  I tried designed a gem mine, Ben tried designing a spinner.  Neither of us were very happy with the results, but we only had two hours.  All the pieces were divided up into bins that took up most of the room.

Tuesday: travel

Today was a travel day.  Sad to spend most of the day traveling, but necessary. 

Let's start with the water in Iceland.  Ben read somewhere that the biggest complaint of it is that it was too much like nothing.  So we tried it again, while really thinking about the water.  Yup...it tastes like nothing.  Just some cold wet in your mouth.  A bit of an odd sensation, when you're really thinking about it.

Our hotel room right before leaving...

We got downstairs a bit early and our driver showed up a minute later.  Everything had been on the early side, which was really nice.  Luggage drop off was a breeze, although it did take a little bit of thinking.  Ben did the self-check which also printed out luggage tags.  I find that the annoying part in the US...if you have bags self check seems a bit pointless.  Anyway, our flight out was a half hour late. :(  We were both rather tired from having slept poorly last night.  (This is in contrast to the previous night, when we slept for 11 hours and woke up to an alarm.)

We got to Copenhagen, walked the entire length of the airport, found out that food is only in the middle of the airport, walked half way back, and then back to our gate.  We had a lot of questions about the airport.  What were these glass-enclosed areas with chairs in them that no one seemed allowed to sit in?  Why didn't our gate have chairs?  (There were a few big benches and a lot of empty space.)  I kept thinking the picture below was a UFO landing right outside.  I know it's crazy, but the shape and the spinning just kept having me think that.

We got to Billund and started looking for taxis.  We encountered another couple who was looking about as lost as we were...not really lost yet, but unsure as to what to do next.  They're also on the Lego tour and so we shared a van ride with them to the hotel.  They're from Australia and we ran into them again as we were exploring the hotel.

I took a lot of hotel pictures.  I do love the decor of Lego hotels.

This is a map of the distance from the hotel to the lego house.  It is measured in meters, mini-figure steps, kid steps, and T-rex steps.

The back of our hotel.  We're the top room on the right.

We had several discussions about this sign.  Don't feed the dragon ham and apples?  Don't throw ham and apples at the dragon?  Don't eat apples, ham, and dragons?  What you do think?

Monday: Golden Circle

Today we went on a tour of the Golden Circle.  While it was a lot of driving, our tour guide was good and kept up a steady stream of (mostly) interesting information.  Ben and I both nodded off a bit when he was talking about elves and mythology, but it was also warm in the van and we had been driving a while.

Our first stop was at a bakery.  This stop was really just to break up the drive a little bit.  We were able to get an Icelandic donut, which was a deep fried ball with lemon drops (melted) and raisins.  It sort of tasted like your normal cake donut, but lemony and with a crispier outside.

Then we went to our first waterfall.  I forget the exact name, but it had something to do with it looking like a horse's mane.  There was also a salmon ladder.

After a stop at a barn (it seemed a bit like a random stop, but it was nice to get out), we went to the second waterfall.  It has a neat turn in it.

Then we went to a geyser.  There used to be another one 100 ft away and it's name was Geyser...it was the original one and where we get the word from.  We were able to see the steam start to come up, a big bubble of water appear, and then it would shoot high in the air.  It was probably my favorite part of the day.  It also had a whole bunch of false alarms where the pressure must have been evening out, because the top of the water would sink just a little bit.  Normally the geyser goes off every 5-10 minutes, but we had a few that were closer to 2.5min.  Since we had a limited amount of time there, it was nice that it went off a few extra times.

We made a quick detour to get some ice cream.  The milking cows on the island apparently have more milkfat (about twice as much) in their milk as other cows.  The ice cream was very creamy.  We were also able to see some of the cows who helped make the ice cream while we ate it.

Lastly we stopped at the mid-Atlantic rift.  It is a valley in between the North American tectonic plate and the Eurasian one, so geologically speaking it is not part of a continent.

We had lots of rainbow sightings today.  The weather was nice the whole day...a possible drizzle, a little sun, but not too much of either.

For dinner we found an Icelandic sub shop.  It was similar to what we know, but still different enough to say we had something native.  Then we stopped to get a piece of chocolate cake and it was delicious.  Almost like an undercooked brownie, but more melty.  I'll leave you with a view from our hotel room.

Sunday: arrival and Blue Lagoon

The day started around 6:30am, which is 2:30am EDT.  I had a hard time getting to sleep on the plane, and then 6:30 is around the time they served breakfast.  While it did end up being a long day, the sleepiness didn't hit us too often.

Our plane arrived at the gate at 7:30, an hour before it was scheduled to do so.  We went through person control to get our passport stamped.  It was the easiest I've ever been through.  There were no forms to fill out and all the guy asked was "how long will you be here?"  We picked up our bags and headed to customs.  If you had something to declare you went one way, otherwise you went a second way.  The second way went around a few corners and...we were out.  Our new criteria for something being easy is "as easy as customs in Iceland."

We found out that we were in time for the early bus to the Blue Lagoon.  We were unable to actually get into the lagoon any earlier, unfortunatly, but it was a much nicer place to wait than the airport.  It also gave us some time to take pictures and to walk a little trail.

This was part of the Blue Lagoon by the table where we waited.  It was man-made, but by accident.  Workers were trying to get rid of some wastewater from the geothermal electricity plant.  The water actually sealed the rock, making it air tight.  The water gets heated from the lava, brought up, and then permeates back down.  (The process takes about forty hours.)  Anyway, it means that you have a huge hot tub.

Ok, so we weren't allowed in quite yet so we walked around.  It was odd to be walking in a lava field.  There were rocks everywhere.  Most of them are covered in moss.  (Also odd...the countryside has no trees and no visible animals.  The city has trees and grass and animals.  Don't tell Isaac as he has a communities quiz tomorrow and it'll get him all mixed up.)  The land is quite flat, although there are some large hills.  Due to the lack of trees, you can see really far.

So we finally got in.  The water really was lovely.  Some places were hot, some places were warm.  The depth was always changing, although never past my neck.  My first favorite thing was when it rained.  To have the cold raindrops with the hot water was cool.  (It started out overcast, but after a while started to do a rain-sun cycle.  I loved the rain, but the sun was too bright!)  I did get to see a rainbow once when it was raining with sun.

My second favorite part was when we found a spot that was cold on the bottom and hot on the top.  The cold was "this is too cold for a shower" cold and the hot was "this is almost a hot-for-Amanda shower".  It was fun to move your hands up and down and feel the drastic difference.  It also helped you from getting too hot.

We left, checked in at the hotel, and then went to eat.  The food was good; I had haddock and Ben had lamb.  The we walked through the winter cold wind to see an intriguing building.  Harpa is a performing arts center, but has a honeycomb wall.

After warming up and enjoying the odd building, we quickly walked back to the hotel.  It's only 8pm, but we are quickly getting ready for bed!

Saturday: we're off!

Everyone left for "vacation" today.  I put it in quotes because the boys still need to go to school.

They were so excited to leave though!  Dad and Pat came to pick them up and before I knew it Joshua was buckling himself in before he said good bye. We saw a few pictures throughout the day and it looked like they were having lots of fun.

Ben and I finished packing and did quite a bit of cleaning before leaving.  The kitties did not care that we were leaving.

We're about to board again.  Iceland, here we come!

Friday: a cat scare

The cats were confined to the bathroom/storage area for a few hours tonight.  I went to let them out, and only one could be found...but there were sounds in the office that shouldn't really be there.

Our bathroom vent fell off a few weeks ago.

"Um, how likely is it that Horizon is stuck in our vents?"  I asked Ben.

We continued to hear clanging.  How do you get a cat out of a vent?  Especially when you're leaving the next day for vacation?  I opened some vents on the top floor.  We clicked the clicker.  We walked around.

Finally, we saw him.

He was crawling around in the top of the ceiling, but he wasn't stuck.  Very spider-webby, but not stuck. Not really where I want him to be, but something to deal with another time.  Phew.

Tuesday: twins again

Isaac and Joshua independently chose the same T-shirt and shorts today.  There was some frantic planning right before it was time to go to get the same socks.  They were so excited to be twins.