Moose on the Move!

Denmark has been on our list of places to get to since before we left home at the beginning of the year. For anyone who doesn't know, Elke lived there for a year, after she finished high school, on exchange.

So we finally got organised and booked a a trip over to Copenhagen to visit Anette and Kent and their little daughter Laura who was born in March.

We decided that because we were flying out of Stansted, which is to the north London, we would drive to Cambridge and stay there the night before our flight. The idea behind this madness was that we would therefore avoid a mad rush in the morning to get all the way to Stansted and we would get to see Cambridge (a little bit).

So on Thursday evening October 27th we drove all the way to Cambridge, this turned out to be a much longer drive than we had expected. There was a lot of traffic on the M25 (the big road that circles London) and we ended up spending quite a bit of time comparing the motorhomes that were crawling along beside us. We did take along a book-on-tape thingo to make the trip that little bit more exciting.

We arrived in Cambridge late and after dumping our stuff, we took off for a quick look around the city. However, the 24 hour drinking laws hadn't come into effect just yet and everything was mostly closed and there were not too many people around so we decided to head home and get some sleep.

The next morning, we again went into the town centre to take a look at it's famous colleges and so on. Cambridge, like Oxford, is a University town. There are several very old colleges and buildings all over the place. As we didn't have a huge amount of time, we sort of just wandered around a couple of the main streets and had a quick glance into some of the courtyards of the bigger colleges, including Kings College. It was a nice taste of Cambridge and we will certainly put that on our list of places to revisit....when we get time :)

After a quick lunch, we jumped into the car and headed back to Stanstead airport. The flight to Copenhagen is only about an hour long. It still amazes me that we can fly to another capital city in another country in about 1 hour. Anyway, Elke was pointing out some of the sites and where she thought the airport was. However we flew straight over the airport and back over some water we then came over another land mass which confused Elke a little as she was pretty sure we should land in the airport we just passed. The plane then turned and headed back for the original airport Elke thought we should be landing at. The land mass we were currently over....was Sweden. It just so happens, that things are so close here, that you need to fly over another country...just so you have enough room to come down to land on the runway of your country of destination. Amazing!

We caught the train into the city and went to the hairdressers that Kent (our host) owns. He and Anette live in Holbaek, which is about an hour's drive west of Copenhagen. Here we got to see Kent and Anette's beautiful new home, and even more importantly, their beautiful new baby, Laura. It was fantastic to catch up with them all. We had a lovely feast and then an early night.

Saturday morning, Kent took off to work and Elke, Annette, Laura and I all walked down to into the town centre of Holbaek. It was a beautiful day with blue skies and loads of sunshine. Holbaek is a nice little place. We went to one of the grocery stores and got a couple of extra things for our traditional Danish lunch and headed home.

Anette whipped up a beautiful meal, which we shared once Kent came home. It included various types of herring (pickled, marinated etc), liverpostei and bacon, frikedeller, rugbread and remoulade. Yup..it all sounds very weird, but it tasted great. It was especially nice washed down with a cold Danish Carlsberg in one hand and some icy schnapps in the other. Lunch lasted at least a couple of hours so we just spent the rest of the day lazing around, playing with Laura and generally catching up.

On Sunday, we loaded the five of us (four and a little one) into their little car and drove out to see some of the beautiful Autumn trees on the way to Fredensborg Slot, one of the Royal Palaces.

We drove up to the palace, where the Danish Royal Family lives outside of Copenhagen, this, of course, now includes Aussie Mary Donaldson and Danish Crown Prince Frederik, and their newly born son. We arrived right on time for the changing of the guards. It was fantastic. First Kent got a great parking spot close to the gate, then we got to see the changing of the guards, and then...we heard some commotion and glanced over to see Frederik and Mary leaving one section of the house to go to the main palace for lunch with the rest of the royal family. Perfect. Elke did a quick lens change and snapped a couple of 'paparazzi' style shots, imediately afterwards suffering pangs of guilt. They didn't last too long.

A large portion of the Palace grounds are open to the public and we wandered around enjoying the sunshine and blue skies and fabulous autumn colours in the trees. As we were leaving we were lucky enough to see Prince Henrik (the Queen's husband) and Prince Joakim's two little boys, leaving after thier lunch. Elke respected their privacy this time and didn't take a photo.

After a lovely lunch in the park, we headed back to the car and took off to one of the other Royal Palaces in the middle of the country in a place called Fredricksborg. This palace is no longer inhabited but the church can be used. The gardens here are in the Baroque style and include a monogram made in hegdes for each of the royals. It was a peaceful place to visit and walk.

Laura was tired in the car on the way home and Anette had to sing to her most of the way back. Elke and I are now quite familiar with a whole range of Danish nursery rhymes and children's lullabies.

On Monday, Kent had to work again and so all of us went into Copenhagen with him. Anette, Elke and I went shopping and found a ski suit for me, for our trip to Norway at Christmas. I own a ski suit! While we were in the Copenhagen, we saw the changing of the guards at Amalienborg Palace (the Copenhagen residence of the royal family), we went on a canal cruise and saw the little mermaid, the new opera house, Marmor Kirke and various other Copenhagen sights. It was a nice day in Denmark's capital. We would like to go back at some point and see a few more of the highlights that we didn't get to this time.

That evening Anette and Kent dropped us off at the airport and we said "goodbye 'til next time". The flight home was uneventful, but because we didn't think about our flight times very carefully when we booked, we then faced a four hour drive home. We arrived back in Exeter in the wee hours of Tuesday morning and fell gratefully into bed.