Bike Riding

Bike Riding is huge in Denmark.  Most streets have bike lanes, there are walking/bike paths all through the cities and even many intersections have separate lights for bicycles!  As we've posted before, we all got bikes pretty quickly after moving over here.  Chad rides his bike to work every day, I pull Lexi in the trailer to and from her school every day and now that the weather is good, Myra's school class has started taking bike riding field trips.  Last summer, Myra was pretty close to riding a bike, but we just didn't have a good place to practice, so she was never quite able to. But, once we got her out on the bike here, she was riding really well after just a couple of practice sessions.  Her being able to ride has opened up so many new exploring possibilities for us. We can now ride our bikes to the train station, instead of taking a bus.

 This cuts down on a ton of travel time and we can leave whenever we want, instead of waiting for whenever the bus comes around.  Also, we've been able to go out exploring the neighborhood in the evenings.  Once we started taking these little trips, we've been shocked at all the beautiful places that are just within a couple of miles away from us.

 
 There are seriously bike paths everywhere, so we've just been getting on one and seeing where it takes us.  We end up riding about 3-4 miles.  We stop a lot and take pictures and just explore.  It's been so much fun.  Denmark is so beautiful.  I hope that we have a lot more nice days exploring the neighborhood.  And now that the sun isn't setting until 10pm or so, we have long summer nights to enjoy the outdoors.

Herstedvester Kirke, dates back to around the late 12th century.

Zip Line at a park

One of the MANY playgrounds.

Swans with their cute babies

Roskilde

We decided we would try to visit Roskilde again, since our last visit wasn't quite satisfactory.  It was a beautiful day, no rain, we checked to make sure the Cathedral was open and we were very careful not to leave our stroller on the train this time! Our first stop was the Roskilde Cathedral.

 Wow, this was such a beautiful building.

 The cathedral was built during the 12th and 13th century and has been the main burial site for the Kings and Queens of Denmark since the 1600's.

 It's also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  The Cathedral has so much history, I won't write much here, but here's a link if you want to read more about it.

 The Cathedral was very fascinating to walk through.  Over the last 800 or so years, the Cathedral has been added to and changed to accompany new rooms and such.  It was interesting to see different parts of the Cathedral that dated back from the 1200's, but also to view rooms that were built within the last 100 years.

 
The kids were quite fascinated with the fact that we were walking over tombs in the floor and they especially enjoyed peering through the grates that led to underground tombs.

 I found Christian IV's Chapel the most interesting, due to the history behind it.  We knew very little of Denmark history before coming to Denmark, but once here, the name of King Christian IV pops up everywhere.  He had a huge influence on building here in Denmark and many of the places we've visited were either commissioned or changed or something involving him.  What I find most fascinating is that he commissioned to have a Chapel constructed to for his Coffin once he died in 1648.  It wasn't finished by the time he passed away, so his coffin was just placed in the crypt below.  Well, his successors didn't deem it financially important to work on his tomb and when a fire claimed the Sandstone monument that was suppose to be placed over his tomb, finishing his chapel was all but forgotten.  It was until the 1840's that King Christian VIII started work on it again and finally, it was finished in 1870.

Poor King, he did so much for Denmark, but his final resting place was all but forgotten for 200 years!  Anyway, it was a neat Chapel, complete with a Statue for Christian IV done by Bertel Thorvaldson, the same guy who did the Christus Statue.

We thoroughly enjoyed visiting such a beautiful place.  Quite awe-inspiring!  After leaving the Cathedral, we walked down the hill and had lunch at this beautiful park. 

The kids especially enjoyed seeing the Mommy duck with all her little babies.

Poor Mom, how does she keep track of so many babies?  We then headed over to the Roskilde Viking Museum.
 
In the 1960's, 5 Viking ships that were deliberately sunk in the Roskilde Fjord in 1020ad were discovered.  Since then, they've built up a really nice museum around them, complete with Viking Activities for the family and reconstructed replicas of the original boats.  This was a really fun place to visit and I'm sure we'll go back again.

You can even pay a little extra to go out sailing on a Viking Ship replica in the Fjord.

In was kind of late in the day, so we didn't do that this time.  The view looking out into the Fjord was beautiful.

 We got to see how they made rope, how the boats were reconstructed using replicas of the tools that were used to build the original viking ships. We got to dress up as Vikings.  In this huge room, they have the pieces of the original boats on display.
 
They were pretty neat.  It's just amazing to see something so old.  The boats were sunk on purpose in the Fjord to block a fairway to protect the village of Roskilde from attack.  I admit that Viking culture is something I know very little about, but am excited to learn more of.  After leaving the museum, we went home and watched How to Train Your Dragon, because, of course, it has vikings in it.  =)  Overall, it was one of the most fun days we've had here in Denmark.  Roskilde is such a nice little European town.  We all really liked it.

Botanical Gardens

Last week, the girls and Chad all had Thursday and Friday off from work and school, so we did a few day trips.  On Thursday, we didn't have any definitely plans, we just decided to head in to Copenhagen in the general direction of a couple museums we knew about.  After getting off the train, we walked through the University of Copenhagen's Botanical Gardens. It was so pretty. The Copenhagen Botanical Garden was established in the 1600's, but didn't move to it's present location until 1870.  They have a huge variety of plants, from all over the world.  They have a lot of statues of Greek God's places around the gardens, but the neatest part (I thought) was the Conservatory. Basically, it's a huge domed glass greenhouse.  It was a pretty chilly day and once we walked inside, it suddenly felt like we were back in Florida.  Especially when we climbed up the rickety spiral staircase to walk around the top, we were all sweating! After leaving the garden, we wanted to head over to the Geological Museum, but after wandering around for quite some time, looking for the entrance, we finally realized it was closed.  Across the street though, is the Statens Museum for Kunst, the national art museum.  It's a huge building and after walking inside and finding out they closed in an hour, we decided we better save it for another day.  It was still early in the day, and I wasn't ready to go home, so I talked my family into walking toward the Marble Church. It was a bit farther to walk than it looked and when we got there, it was closed and under construction or something.  I only took one picture and it doesn't really do it justice, it was very beautiful.  So, another place to visit in the future.  By this time, the kids were all grumpy and we were all kind of tired of walking, so we just headed back through the Strøget, toward the train.  It was a bit of a lackluster day, but we still enjoyed getting out of the house and enjoying time with the family.

Look who's Seven!

On May 10th, we celebrated Myra's 7th birthday!  Seven, really?  How did that happen?  She's been such a joy to us for the past 7 years and we love her more and more every day.  Myra's birthday happened to fall on a week day, so she was pretty bummed about having to go to school on her birthday.  But, I knew she'd want to go and have everyone wish her happy birthday.  I took a treat into her class in the morning and I know her teacher was planning on doing a big "party" for her.  She came home from school with several presents from her friends and a bunch of drawings that all of the kids in her classes had made for her.  That night, she was really anxious for Dad to get home so she could open up her presents.  She got a couple of new nightgowns, a kite, a new doll, some books and a huge stuffed dog that she was so thrilled about.  (So was Noah.) We had Taco Soup for dinner, her favorite and then she requested a raspberry cake.  It didn't turn out very pretty, but it tasted good.

Playing the Game that Grammy and Grandad Sent.

Myra was just on cloud nine all day long.  She loves having everyone make a fuss over. She got to talk to her grandparents, which made her really happy also.  At age seven, Myra is still as loving and kind and tender-hearted as she's always been. She also continues to have 100% energy, 100% of the time.  She wears me out, and she's at school most of the day.  Myra is the most loving big sister.  Both Lexi and Noah absolutely adore and look up to her.  I think Myra prefers playing with her siblings than anyone else.  She is enjoying her school and making new friends, although I know it has been difficult for her.  She's slowly learning Danish and I think that one day, it will just click.  She enjoys reading and taking care of her "babies."  We love Myra so much and are so happy to have her in our family.