vacation Thursday, part 1 (June 11): Aarhous

Today we took a day trip to the second largest city in Denmark, Aarhous.  (Pronounced Our-hoose, where hoose rhymes with goose.)

Ben was in charge of driving.  Driving in Denmark is very similar to driving in the US, so for the most part it wasn't a big deal.  I did find it interesting that the lane lines make noise as you drive over them (like the solid road edge lines in the US), but no one else seemed to care.  The scenery was pretty, but once again not all that different from a country drive here.

We were both a bit nervous about parking.  We (and by we I mean Ben) did some research and knew were parking was and had a plan, but there are always some unknowns.  Anyway, we got to the first place no problem but then Ben was having trouble getting the app to pay for the parking to work.  I ended up trying too and was able get it work!  So, long story is that I ended up having a Denmark number and Ben had his normal US number.  This really worked nicely, because sometimes we needed to have a Denmark number and sometimes we needed to be able to access our normal phone number.  It isn't how we planned it (and Ben didn't really have a phone number for the first few days of the trip), but in the end it worked well.

We went to a botanical garden first and it was a very nice one!  There were some outside gardens leading up to the main building, some greenhouses with warm temperature plants, and then we went to some more outside gardens.

In the greenhouses, it started with a warm but not too bad room.  Then we went into a hotter room.  Then we went into a really hot but dry room.  We finished up in a tropical rain forest.  There was a tower to the top and it was amazing how much hotter it was at the top than the bottom!  Isaac was looking for the largest leaves he could find, and kept finding larger and larger ones until the tropical rain forest.  Those were at least the same size as him.

First big leaves

Banana leaves (behind platform)

I know the people are blurry in this picture (and Ben took a second were we aren't), but I kind of like the blurry.

Also, we learned that the vegetable ivory palm bloomed the day before for the first time in 40 years!  Cheryl was by some people who mentioned something about 40, but didn't really understand until we saw the sign.  We saw them again in the outside gardens and it gave us a little something to chat about.  (Normally these plants bloom more more frequently and can produce 15-20kg per year, but the gardens had transplanted it here 40 years ago and it just hadn't bloomed.)

There were also butterflies in the tropical rain forest.  Most of them were a black with white dots, but we saw a sign that said we might be lucky enough to spot the glass wing butterfly and we did!  The wings were mostly clear.

We took a brief restroom break.  Normally I don't mention the bathrooms because they are pretty normal.  These bathrooms were all decorated individually to match a biome of the world.  I had rainforest one time and bamboo forest another time.  Some biomes were decorated more interestingly than others - the bamboo forest had several bamboo sticks going from floor to ceiling.

We headed out to the outdoor gardens after this.  On our way out we encountered one of our first drinking fountains...they were around, but few and far between.  We walked around for a bit and then Isaac had to go to the bathroom so Joshua and Ben went too.  Cheryl and I enjoyed our walk around the rest of the circle and saw lots of pretty flowers.

We ate lunch at the gardens - bread with meat and bread with jam.

Then we switched parking lots to go to the art museum.  This parking lot used the same app as the previous one, so that was exciting.  This time it acted differently because it was a large parking garage, and it just tracked how long we were there.  It was a little weird and nice all at the same time.

On our way to the art museum I excitedly mentioned that the crosswalks had vikings instead of normal walk people and no one seemed to believe/understand me, so life moved on.  They saw them later when we were walking back so we could all get excited then.

Sunday: LEGO challenge

Today's LEGO challenge came from pick-a-brick pieces.  It was a bit of a tricky challenge this time - there were a lot of tiles and it was a bit hard to find a unifying feature.

Joshua made a few small things, but nothing really stuck.  He ended up with something similar to those big water buckets at water parks that keep filling with water until they dump, but didn't want a picture.

Isaac made some critters: a flying cloud, a love fly (with a butt fluffle!), a scary one, and a water something that can sting and snap at it's prey.

I made flowers.  We had long stems.  I think the pink ones (back middle) look the most flower-like, but I like the tall left one and the bottom middle one the most.

Ben made a floating castle with a waterfall.

After we were done Joshua put all the extra sticks in a bundle and the game was to hold the sticks, do a hammering motion three times, and see how many came out.  It ended up being more exciting than I was expecting.  The beginning is pretty boring, but suddenly all sorts of sticks are coming out and it is funny.

Saturday: screen time day

The kids wanted a screen time day this summer.  Ben was gone all day for a work conference, so I thought it would be a good day for it.

The kids did a good job going back and forth between screens and not-screens.  My goal was to get some quilting done, some of the vacation blog done, and random other chores.  It worked well!  I finished the quilt that I was quilting and got a second one loaded.  I got a day of the trip finished.  It wasn't as much as I was hoping for, but sometimes it's ok if things take time.  (I have two more posts scheduled for later in the week.)  The items that had been moved for carpet cleaning and painting have been put back in their correct spots.

vacation Wednesday, part 2 (June 10): Legoland

 We had one last big ride to do.  It was a crazy back-and-forth ride, so Ben and Cheryl elected not to do it.  I didn't think it was too bad, but there was a lot of direction switching.  It was fun enough that we still did it twice!  Joshua almost did it three times as he couldn't escape from him harness, but the workers helped him out.

We hit the Temple next, an indoor ride in which you shoot at things for points.  It was a normal ride, but we all had fun and did a pretty good job of getting points.

We did the polar coaster again!  Then we wandered nearby, as we were starting to think about lunch but instead found a water play area with simple machines.  

It started raining again, so we had a little snack under a good roof with the polar bears.  It also had some fun inside activities - you could make a vehicle and then drive/fly it around by in interactive screen to find gems/whales, depending on the story.  Once you figured out how to do it, and if no one else was trying to do it at the same time, it worked really well.  A few stairs up was another landing with other interactive items.  If you stood near the yeti's home he would come say hi.  You could step on ice to break it and find a surprise underneath.  Nothing huge, but a nice fun thing to do while it stopped raining.

Speaking of the rain, it stopped just long enough for us to go over to our lunch place.  Ben said this was the only place in the park that had good food (based on the ratings) and it was amazing.  There was some baked chicken that was probably the best I've ever had.  I also got the kids meal because it had LEGO French fries.  They were seasoned mashed potatoes shaped into LEGO bricks and I thought they were much better than normal French fries.

Although it rained while we were eating, that was the last of the rain for the day.  We had done a nice job being under or inside when it was raining and outside when it wasn't.  We had a plan to split up soon, but first we went to the Haunted House.  It was rather interactive without being all that spooky, so everyone had a good time.

We did a little boat ride.  (Isaac is trying to smile here but it's just so sunny!)

Ben and Cheryl went to do some shopping while the other three of of did a ride again.  I expect it was the polar one because that was our favorite, but I don't actually have any pictures so I can't remember.  Before too long we met up again in the Ningajo area.  They had the same 3D virtual shooter game that the other Legolands have.  It was fun, but it is hard to figure out exactly how to position your hand.

The other item in that area is a laser maze and it was really cool.  There are two different hallways and you can choose your difficulty.  You get timed and for each laser you hit you lose five seconds.  We did this several times because the line was short and it was a lot of fun and we wanted to see how different settings and hallways worked.

We took a short safari before heading to the store to actually make purchases.  Ben had found another pick-a-brick wall and the kids got some t-shirts.  I made a bridge of bridges while waiting.

At this point all the rides were closed, but we still had a bit of time so we finished up in miniland again.  This time we looked at all the places we would be traveling to soon.  We realized, with about fifteen minutes to spare, that we had wanted to get churros.  Well, we were rather close to the churro place so we got some!  Then we headed out of the park...fairly quickly, but still stopping to take some pictures.

Aarhous, tomorrow's visit

Bergen:

For dinner I went to the grocery store for sandwich stuff.  Ben did a ton of work throughout the vacation dealing with where we were going to eat, so I was glad that I could make at least this one decision.  I was trying to translate the different types of cheese but they wouldn't translate.  None of them would, and I found that rather weird.  I picked two random ones and they were good, but cheese is good.

Isaac worked on a stop motion during the evening.