where stories and pictures of the things we do will be posted intermittently at best. Hope to see you there!

The restaurant in the hotel had Julefrokost (hooray! we all know how much I love that!) AND æbelskiver, so I got to indulge in my favourite Danish foods one last time. After a restless night due to nervousness (30 hours traveling with small children?! WHAT were we thinking?!) and excitement (we are going HOME!!!), we made our way to the terminal and onto the plane. Where we waited nearly two hours for the plane to be de-iced due to the unexpected snowfall.

This created a new stress for us … would we make our connection in London? We had to change terminals, we didn’t have a pushchair, we’d have to carry children and cabin baggage *stress stress stress*. The cabin crew were very encouraging that we had plenty of time (95 minutes) and as it happened we made our plane quite comfortably (and had the BEST shortest security queue EVER at terminal 3 at Heathrow). And so we board our second plane - the Airbus A380 - and sat for another two hours … waiting to be de-iced (remember the unseasonable snow?).

Finally we were in the air toward Singapore for yet another short stop - but this time we were staying on the same plane so we didn’t feel the stress of time pressure. What we felt was the pressure of a child with travel sickness. Believe me, it is ALWAYS worth taking a spare outfit (or seven) because you never know when it will hit. Singapore Changi Airport was a brief stopover consisting of me sitting listlessly and nauseous, trying to make sure the children didn’t wander away or vomit on anything important, while Simon dashed off looking for spare tshirts for Hugo. Let me say now, that leg of the flight is something I NEVER want to repeat again. In fact if I had my time over, I wouldn’t do a long haul flight that had more than one stopover. It’s just too stressful.

By the time we landed in Sydney we were all feeling better and excited to be home (except maybe Sophie, who had no concept of “home” that wasn’t Copenhagen). Our tentative euphoria melted as it became clear that our luggage had not made one of the connections at some point. It was just something we didn’t need at the end of 30 hours travel but in the end there was nothing for it but to go home and hope we had enough essentials to get us through until our luggage caught us up.

Fortunately, we managed to get together some underwear, summer clothes and toiletries, and to be fair Qantas got our luggage to us VERY quickly (3 bags within 24 hours and the other two the next day).

And strangely, it feels like barely a week has passed since we left home. In retrospect it went so quickly! I know there were times when it felt long, and slow, and incredibly hard but on the other hand we had so many great experiences and had so much fun!

We’ll remember our time in Copenhagen happily, and look at our photos and reminisce. Was it worth it? YES!! Would we do it again? … um, maybe. Ask me when the memory of that last flight has faded!!

Farvel, Denmark.

The end.

Goodbye Copenhagen, goodbye Østerbro. Thanks for all the memories

One of the anomalies of living in Australia is that we have a very “European” idea of Christmas, with snow and reindeer and candles and all those seasonally inappropriate things. It’s actually much easier to understand Christmas from a European experience. To have good food, candles, bright trees, gifts and a festival of light in the midst of long, dark nights and short, dark days is something to celebrate and look forward to.

Lights at Tivoli, taken at 4pm (by which time, it’s basically dark).

It’s no secret that I’m not that keen on Danish food. Rollmops? Eww. Chocolate sandwiches? Blech. But …. we went to a restaurant in Tivoli which is known for it’s traditional Christmas meal (Julefrokost) and it. was. delicious! I *think* it’s basically roast pork, potatoes and redcabbage which sounds a bit … bleh … actually but to eat OH YUM!! And followed by delicious rice pudding (I am a BIG fan of rice pudding).**

Also, at Christmas time they make the æbelskiver (I think that’s how it’s spelt), it means apple slices. It’s basically a spherical pancake and it is YUMMY! I need to learn how to make these! Hugo in particular is very fond of them, dipped in jam and powdered sugar.

** To add, we subsequently were lucky enough to share in home made Julefrokost with one of Simon’s colleagues and it was even better, so so delicious!

I have to say, until now, we really haven’t had much to do with “Santa”. It’s really just never come up in a significant way. However, Santa (or Julemanden, the Danish equivalent) is a huge thing at preschool. Hugo ASSURES me that they met the REAL julemanden at preschool. So at an age when most children are starting to get skeptical, he is suddenly starting to believe it. Sophie just hangs off everything Hugo tells her so she’ll be interested for as long as he is.

We stayed in Cambridge, which was lovely. Hugo was devastated when we got off the plane and realised we weren’t heading to Granny and Grandad’s IMMEDIATELY to play with his electric trains. The flight over was just me and the kids … it was ok, but not great and I’m not too keen to fly on my own with them again any time soon. It *seemed* like a good idea to buy a little lego box for each of them before we got on the plane. Ok … small lego, tiny tray, turbulance - so NOT a good idea. Just in case you’re wondering.

We had a really nice time with Granny and Grandad (and the electric trains) right up until I thought to myself “aww the children are playing so nice and quietly in the next room” and walked in to discover Sophie colouring the carpet in with lipstick ARGH!! We did get it out (thank goodness) but I am reminded yet again that *Quiet Children* is usually a reason to WORRY

On Sunday we filled in a few hours before our plane at Westfields London, and honestly, we could have almost been in Bondi Junction. Westfields is so generic, right down to the Boost Juice bars and hoards of parents pushing bugaboo prams. I reveled in the pre-Christmas unbridled selfish consumerism for a little while (shopping centres like that don’t really exist in Denmark), but it was a bit tiring as well.

River Cams + Bridge = Cambridge.