July 30, 2015

Our trip to Sweden was quick, but I accomplished my two main goals…to go to Ikea and to eat Swedish Fish.  (Yes, I am a big nerd).  We only really spent a day and a half in Stockholm, we would have stayed longer but it was rainy and the forecast called for rain for the entire week, so we decided to just cut it short and keep moving.

We started our time in Sweden with an 8 hour layover in Malmo where we were waiting for our next train.  We took advantage of the free time to walk around and check out the city.  We managed to find a movie theater that was showing “Minions” in English, so we spent the afternoon at the movies.  🙂  It was a nice break from all of the walking around.  We took a sleeper train from Malmo to Stockholm, which was great.  We had a private room for the three of us and the beds were surprisingly comfortable (or maybe it just seemed that way compared to all of the camping!)  Once we got to Stockholm (about 6:00 am), we got started early with our day.  We found our campground and got all set up and immediately took off for the day.  We went to the Royal Palace, which was pretty cool.  The outside of the palace was not as grand as lots of the castles/palaces that we have seen, but the inside was very nice.  They had lots of the rooms open, so we could see a pretty decent amount of the palace.

Throne Room

Royal Palace

Throne in the Receiving Room

Royal Palace

One of the Queen’s Medals

Royal Robes/Jewelry

Medal for taking care of reindeer. lol

In the remaining part of the original castle

We also went to the treasury with the crown jewels, but unfortunately, no pictures were permitted.  The crowns were really amazing…I think I would like one of my own!  🙂

By this time, it was POURING down rain.  Of course, it was sunny in the morning, so we hadn’t brought our ponchos with us.  We were soaking and decided to skip the Viking Museum (which was an outdoor museum) and head straight to IKEA!!  We got there around lunch time and figured we would check out the lunch in an actual Swedish Ikea.  It was EXACTLY the same!  lol  Literally…the meatballs and potatoes tasted the same, Hayden had crepes with lingonberries which were the same ones that we always get and the cookies were the same too.  I guess that means we have been getting authentic Swedish food at our local Ikea.  lol  The funniest part of the trip was the insane line for lunch!  Seriously, we waited at least 30 minutes to get to the front of the line to order.  I guess everyone in Sweden really does go to Ikea.  Luckily for us, they sold Swedish Fish at the store, so we got to eat our Swedish Fish AT Ikea, IN Sweden…definitely an authentic experience.  😉

Eating Swedish Fish at Ikea

Lunch Line at Ikea

From Ikea, we walked across the street to the mall and just walked around for a while.  It was still raining, so we didn’t really feel like going back to the campsite.  The mall was nice, pretty much the same stores that we have at home.  By 7:00 pm or so, we went back to camp for the night.  It actually stopped raining for the night, which was nice.  First thing in the morning, we headed back to the train station and are now working our way to Oslo, Norway!

July 28, 2015

What can I say about the last three days…we spent them at LEGOLAND, so I’m sure you have an idea of who is the happiest kid in the world right about now!  We decided to skip Copenhagen (crazy expensive) and come straight to LEGOLAND for a couple of days.  It wasn’t hard to convince Hayden (or Adam) of the change of plans.  We found that the campground at LEGOLAND was actually cheaper than anything we were finding in Copenhagen, so it actually turned out to be a good decision.  The campsite was beautiful with great playgrounds, nice bathrooms, and was walking distance to the park.  We got checked it when we arrived on Sunday afternoon and spent the afternoon just hanging out.  We spent all day Monday and Tuesday in the park…we had lots of fun!  Hayden was super brave and went on EVERY ride!  (Even the big rollercoaster!)  We got to see the world’s largest Lego model which is an X-Wing Fighter (from Star Wars) and we met Lego Darth Vader.  We ate lunch in two of the buffet restaurants which both had unlimited ice cream…we are all about 10 lbs heavier!  Below you can see lots of pictures of the days we spent there.

Campground at Legoland

Yippy! LEGOLAND Denmark!!

LEGOLAND – Denmark

Haunted Mansion

LEGOLAND Monorail

Shark bait

Oh no…we’re too early!!

Biggest Lego model in the world!

Lego Luke Skywalker

Lego Darth Vader

Brrrrrrrr

Yum…pizza!

Sir Hayden

Finding Nemo…

Lego time

Biggerness

Cruisin…

Lego White House

Lego Abu Simbel

Uh oh…

Emmett, Hayden, and Wild Style

From here we are continuing north into Scandinavia to visit Sweden and Norway.

July 25, 2015

We are just wrapping up our time in Berlin, Germany. We spent 4 days here and really loved it! We arrived here from Dresden in the afternoon and made our way to our campsite just outside of town. It wasn’t the best campsite we’ve been to, but we had a nice spot right on the river for our tent, so that was nice. The tent pitching area was dirt instead of grass, so it got pretty muddy when it rained one of the nights, but it wasn’t the end of the world. That first evening, we just hung out at the campsite and found a grocery store nearby to stock up our food supply for the next few days. We also planned out how we would be spending our time. We decided that for the first day, we wanted to do one of the city tours since there is SO MUCH to see in Berlin. We knew that we could walk around on our own, but we wouldn’t get a lot of the info on the history of places and that a tour would give us a better lay of the land for the next few days. We decided to take a bike tour…it was a lot of fun! They had a trailer bike for Hayden so that he didn’t have to ride on his own. (LOTS of traffic) We had a great time cruising through the city and we definitely saw much more than we would have walking and got closer to things that a bus tour would have taken us. We were really happy with the bike tour.

Berlin Bike Tour

Berlin

Berlin Bike Tour

Berlin really is an amazing city. All of the history with WWI, WWII, the USSR occupation of Berlin, the history of the wall, etc. One of the things that I didn’t realize is that many of the buildings, although they look old, have been recently rebuilt since they were destroyed in the bombings. During the time that the wall was up, many of the old buildings that had been bombed out just sat there. Once the wall fell, the German government began to rebuild the buildings to look like they did before they were destroyed.

Church undergoing reconstruction

Berlin Opera House

Berlin French Church

Victory Tower

Our favorite stop along the tour was the site of the wall and Checkpoint Charlie. Our guide was great about giving us the history of Checkpoint Charlie and giving us a quick history lesson on the wall. We got to stand with one foot in East Berlin and one foot in West Berlin. We also went to the site of the famous book burning in front of the University. They have built an underground memorial that was pretty cool.

Remaining Berlin Wall section

Berlin Wall

Watch Tower

Berlin

Book Burning Memorial

Another great memorial was the Memorial to the Jewish people that died under Hitler. It’s a huge open square with rectangular blocks of all different sizes. You can just hang out and sit on the blocks or walk through the maze of them. An interesting fact is that while they were building the memorial, they discovered that under the site was a bunker that belonged to Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda. Despite some controversy, they still built the memorial on the site. After that, we saw the bunker where Hitler stayed for the last days of the war and where he killed himself. The bunker has since been filled in (they tried to blow it up, but it was too thick) and paved over to be a parking lot. There is nothing to really mark it except for a small billboard parking the spot.   Apparently, the only reason that they installed the placard was because people kept knocking on the doors of the locals to ask where the bunker was located…they put up the placard so that the locals would be left alone! Lol At the end of the tour, we had dinner at McDonalds (Hayden’s choice), then went back to the campsite.

Jewish Memorial

Jewish Memorial

Hitler’s Bunker

The next day we went back into town to get a better look at some of the places that we went by on the bikes. We just kind of bummed around and walked a big loop around the city. We did end up finding a pretty cool Science Museum that was an exhibit on medical technology that was actually pretty cool. We also went to the Neues Museum that had a huge Egyptian exhibit. Hayden really liked it, but we have a hard time getting excited about an Egyptian exhibit after being in Egypt and seeing the things for real! On the way back to the train station, there was a street vendor with HUGE bubble wands for kids to play with…we hung out there for a while and Hayden had a great time making bubbles!

German Parliament Building (Reichstag)

President’s House in Berlin

Museum

Neues Museum Egyptian exhibit

Today we had a serious day and spent the afternoon at the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp near Berlin. The camp has been set up as a memorial to the people that were held here. They have a few of the buildings still standing that they have put together out of the salvaged materials from the site. The exhibits and information was very good, and very sad. They had one of the barracks set up the way it would have been with the beds all squeezed together, the bathroom for all of the people and even a section of the prison, including the solitary confinement. There were several personal accounts from people that had survived their time in the camp, what a terrible experience it must have been. It was a good (although sad) day and very eye opening. I know it’s still a little tough for Hayden to grasp, but hopefully in the future when they talk about WWII in school, he will be able to think back about it.

Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp gates

Concentration Camp fence

Barracks at Concentration Camp

Bathroom for prisoners

Prison yard (poles where they strung up the people being tortured)

Sachsenhausen Memorial

Perimeter Wall

Tonight we have been planning the next few days. We were originally going to go to Copenhagen, but it’s crazy expensive, so we decided that we are going to skip it after all. Instead, we are going to spent three days in Billund at LEGOLAND!!! It just seems wrong to be so close to the home of Legos and NOT visit the park! J Hayden is super excited (and so is Adam). We’re going to take the train up Billund tomorrow and spend the night camping at the park. We got two day tickets so we can spend Monday and Tuesday in the park all day. After that, I think that we are going to continue north up to Sweden/Norway.

July 21, 2015

Yay…we’re in Germany!!  First off, the food is awesome!  We haven’t had a bad meal here yet!  We got to the city and found our campsite which was a little bit outside of the city, but was just fine.  It’s right off of the public bus line, but takes about 30 minutes to get into town.  We can’t really complain because it’s pretty cheap.  We spent the first day and a half walking around the city and checking out all of the buildings.  There are tons of really neat buildings with various histories.  Much of the city was destroyed during the bombing in WWII, but they have either been rebuilt or are in the process of being restored.  The town feels like what I would always think of as a European town, but it’s actually a very large city!  We found some great restaurants and loved just walking around.

Dresden, Germany

Dresden, Germany

Dresden Frauenkirche

Martin Luther

Dresden, Germany

Dresden, Germany

The palace right in the city was really cool.  There was a huge courtyard with beautiful fountains and lots of really neat sculptures around the buildings.  Adam has decided that he would be okay living here.  🙂  It was free to walk around through the residence, so we explored all of the fountains and gardens for a while in the afternoon.

Dresden Zwinger

Dresden Zwinger

Dresden Zwinger

Dresden Zwinger

Crown Gate at Dresden Zwinger

The most famous statue in Dresden! lol

We were pretty excited to find that there was a bowling alley right near our campsite, so we made our way over there in the evening to check if they had open bowling.  We lucked out and it was only $15 for the 3 of us to bowl for an hour.  We played two games…I killed it on the first game, but then Hayden came back and kicked our butts in the second game.  It must have been his professional approach that you can see in the picture below.

Time to Bowl!

Practically a Pro!

The highlight of the city was getting to see our friends Vanessa and Torsten that we met on our safari in Africa.  We were so glad that we met them because they were the ones that suggested we come to Dresden and we’re so glad that we did!  We met up with them in the afternoon and they took us out to a castle in Moritzburg (just outside of Dresden).  The castle was really cool, but the best part were the grounds around the castle.  There were really beautiful trails through the woods where you could bike/walk to different parts of the grounds.  We went through the main castle as well as the “hunting lodge” about 1.5 km away.  It was a perfect afternoon to be out walking, so we really enjoyed it.  After the castle, they took us to dinner at an African restaurant which was great!  Hayden and I had a zebra steak!  I feel a little guilty about eating such a cute animal, but I suppose cows and pigs are cute too, but I don’t have any problem eating them!  lol

With Vanessa and Torsten!

Schloss Moritzburg

Schloss Moritzburg

We ate zebra!!

From here, we are going to head north a little ways up to Berlin for a few days.  There is so much to do there, so we will probably stay for a few days before taking off again.

July 18, 2015

We arrived in Prague from Vienna on Friday afternoon and made our way to our campsite.  Hayden was pretty excited as soon as we got there because there is a huge playground right next to the campsite.  Luckily, the site was easy to find and right next to a bus stop.  We got checked in and started looking up some stuff for us to do in the city.  As a way to find some good activities, we have been going through the “Adventures by Disney” (Disney tour groups) trips to see what they do and what we can copy.  It turns out that there is a trip to Prague and they go to the Folklore Gardens for a Czech Dinner and Dance Show.  We figured if it’s good enough for Disney, we would probably enjoy it too…we were right!  It was a great evening.  The restaurant actually has a shuttle, so they picked us up right from the campsite to go to the dinner.  The food was amazing and the dancers were very good.  Adam was happy with the unlimited beer and Hayden was a big fan of the Apple Strudel.  We all loved the food too!  We sat next to a couple from Israel who were on their first “kid-free” trip and they were very nice.  After dinner, the shuttle took us back to the campsite where we immediately pooped out!

Traditional Czech Dinner and Dance

Traditional Czech Dinner and Dance

Traditional Czech Dinner and Dance

Unlimited Beer!

Apple Strudel…Yum!

Our new friends from Israel

The next morning, we decided to get out and see the city.  We’ve been to quite a few museums as this point, so we just planned to walk around and see the Prague Castle and check out the river front.  At the Prague Castle, there is a wonderful viewing point where you can see the entire city from the top, it was really pretty and exactly what you would expect to see of a European city.  Inside of the castle area, there was a toy museum, so we figured that was something we couldn’t miss.  🙂  The museum was small, but had some neat toys.  Hayden and Adam like the Star Wars and Super Hero toy sections the most.  There was also a Harry Potter doll, so it was a good trip for Hayden!

Prague

Hanging out with Superman

Star Wars Toys

Super Hero Toys

We left the Toy Museum and continued through the castle into the central square where the actual castle is located.  Wow…it was a beautiful building!  We didn’t go inside (long line and a little pricey), but it was amazing from the outside.  The idea of building something that elaborate with the limited technology of the time is really incredible.

Prague Castle

Prague Castle

Prague Castle

From the castle, we walked across the bridge back to the other side of the river where we found a place to rent paddle boats.  It was a nice (although a little hot) day, so being on the river seemed like a good idea.  The paddle boats were fun and Hayden got to stick his feet in the water to cool off.  We have decided that we need to get a paddle boat for the lake when we get home.  It’s a nice was to be on the water and you even get some exercise!

Prague

Riverfront in Prague

Paddle boating!

Paddle boating on the river

Tired after steering the boat

Vltava River in Prague

We walked through town a little more that afternoon and saw the oldest working astronomical clock in the world.  It is actually the third oldest in the world, but it’s the oldest one still working.  The clock dates back to 1410, making it over 600 years old and still running…crazy!  It was even cooler looking in person.

Oldest working clock in the world

We got back to camp a little early and relaxed for a while before we hit the highlight of the city…the movie theater showing Ant Man in English!  🙂  Adam and Hayden had been on the lookout for a way to see the movie, so they were pretty excited to find it in English!  Heaven forbid we miss a Marvel movie!!

Ant Man!

We’re going to take off from Prague tomorrow and head up to Germany…YAY!  We are going to Dresden first where we are going to meet up with some friends that we met on our safari in Africa.  From there, we will spend some time in Berlin before continuing our way through Germany.

July 18, 2015

After several weeks of visiting ruins, churches and museums, we decided to make Vienna a “kid’s trip” for Hayden.  We found a great brochure at our campsite that listed the top things to do in Vienna for families.  He picked the Aquarium for his first choice and we also wanted to get to the palace where they have a children’s section and also a hedge maze to go through.

We hit the Aquarium first because that was what Hayden was the most excited about.  I have to say, it was actually a really cool aquarium!  They had lots of different fish and also had an open room with free-flying birds, monkeys, turtles, a crocodile and lots of fish.  It was really neat and the birds were awesome.  Hayden really enjoyed it, so we were happy!  The aquarium had lots of things that we hadn’t seen before, so it was fun to see all of the new fish.

Giant python!

Giant Sea Turtle

Hayden eating a giant crab

Swimming with the fish

After the aquarium, we walked through town for a while and found the Imperial Treasury.  Wow, talk about some serious jewelry!!  The museum had the Austrian crown jewels along with lots of artifacts/clothing from the past kings/queens through the countries history.  We have decided that it would definitely be nice to be royal.  🙂

Imperial Treasury

Imperial Treasury

We made it a short day and went back to the campsite to hang out and get to bed a little early.  The next morning, we made our way to Schonbrunn Palace where we got the kids family pass for the day.  We went through the palace gardens and out into the hedge maze that they have set up.  We didn’t do great at the maze, but at least we found our way out!  They also had a really cool playground where we spent a while watching Hayden run around.  After being outside for a while, it was starting to get pretty toasty, so we went to tour the inside parts of the palace.  They have kept the children’s rooms in the same shape as when the princes/princesses lived here, so Hayden got to play with the toys and see the rooms all set up.  They certainly had a nice place!  Inside of the kid’s room, they have a ton of “royal clothes” for dressing up.  The best part was that they even had adult sizes, so Hayden and Adam both got to dress up.  I especially like Adam with the long hair!  lol  We also toured the adult portion of the rooms which were very interesting as well.

Schonbrunn Palace Gardens

Schonbrunn Maze

Schonbrunn Maze

Schonbrunn Palace playground

Prince Hayden

King Adam and Prince Hayden

Schonbrunn Palace

We spent another couple of hours walking around town where we saw some great architecture and had some Schnitzel for lunch.

We probably could have spent another couple of days here, but it’s time to move on to Prague and work our way up to Germany!

July 13, 2015

We arrived in Venice yesterday afternoon and camped right outside of the city for the night.  First thing this morning, we got up and got ready so that we could catch the first shuttle into the city this morning.  Based on the cost of Venice, we decided to make this a quick trip and only spend today in the city before heading out.  By the end of the day, we were pretty happy with our decision.  While it is an amazingly cool city, there wasn’t really much of interest for Hayden and everything was pretty expensive.

We got to the city and decided to just walk our way from one side to the other.  Because of the mix of canals and roads, it’s pretty easy to get lost!  We spent some time wandering up and down little alley ways and across canals that I’m sure we had already been through, but it was fine because we just wanted to meander around anyway!  We came across a couple of really neat looking churches, but since we were lost, I have no idea which ones they were!  lol

The Grand Canal

Canals in Venice

Canals in Venice

Canals in Venice

Canals in Venice

The highlight of the day for Hayden was going into a Leonardo DaVinci exhibit that they had set up in one of the local churches.  It is a traveling exhibit that shows models of many of his inventions and talks about his life and all of the things that he accomplished.  It actually ended up being a really cool stop for us!  We spent at least an hour going through everything and it gave us an awesome opportunity to talk about how math and science are important for inventing.  Hayden was totally enthralled with it and has decided that he is going to build a bunch of the machines when we get back home.

DaVinci exhibit in Venice

DaVinci exhibit in Venice

DaVinci exhibit in Venice

DaVinci exhibit in Venice

We did a little more wandering after the DaVinci exhibit, but finally made our way to St. Mark’s Square.  We had read ahead of time that you can feed the birds here, so we stashed some of our bread from lunch to give to the pigeons.  Hayden was in pigeon heaven!  It seems like he is always wanting to chase the birds anytime we go anywhere, so this was his chance to get up close and personal.  You could put some bread in your hand and the birds would come right on to you to eat it.  He would have stayed here for hours, but we ran out of bread!  🙂

Feeding the pigeons in St Mark’s Square

Feeding the pigeons in St. Mark’s Square

Feeding the pigeons in St. Mark’s Square

Feeding the pigeons in St. Mark’s Square

Feeding the pigeons in St. Mark’s Square

We didn’t actually go into the museums in the square (we saw a ton of museums in Italy and decided we could save a few bucks here), so we hung out here in the square for a while before making our way back to the train station.  We intended to take a gondola back, but it was $90 for a 30 minute ride…CRAZY!!!  (Yes, we’re cheap)  We couldn’t quite justify the expense, so we went with the water taxi which still got us some great pictures from the water.  Once we got going, we were glad we didn’t bother paying for the gondola because they were paddling right in the sun with no type of shade and it was HOT!

Once we made it back to the train station, we had a little while to kill, so we went for our old stand-by…ICE CREAM!  We found a place where you can make your own ice cream bar and it was AMAZING!!  You pick your ice cream, then pick the type of chocolate coating (white, milk, or dark), then you get to pick 3 toppings that go on the ice cream bar.  They make it right there…they were so stinking good!  I could have eaten at least 2 or 3 of them if I wasn’t sure they had about 800 calories in each one.  🙂

Best ice cream bar EVER!

We are taking the overnight train to Vienna tonight, so hopefully we will get there in the morning refreshed and ready for a new country!