Deb and James Invade CPH!

My Mom and Dad have now seen the beautiful city of Copenhagen!  I can't believe they have already come and gone, their visit seemed far too short and so surreal.  Having them with me in EUROPE was so weird, but also beyond amazing.  For the past 4 1/2 days I have been the expert tour guide, leading multiple walking tours of greater Copenhagen area.  In order to give you a better idea of what we did, I'm going to split this post into different days...

Day 1-

Arrival of the infamous Deb and James.  After I spent most of the morning sweeping and mopping the apartment, I finally thought that it was in good enough shape to show to my parents (although I was especially worried about my poor mother's mental health when she saw the state of our floor).  Anyways, I hopped on the train and went to go surprise them at the airport. After a semi-long wait, I finally saw my parents headed for the currency exchange.  I screamed for my mother who, at first, ignored me but then came and wrapped me up in a big hug.  My dad, however, had taken 2 advil pm's which had knocked him out and made him rather loopy, so he didn't really know what was going on the whole time.  Luckily, the airport houses the only Starbucks in all of Denmark, so he got his coffee fix and was back in action.  After settling into their hotel for a few minutes, I walked them down the picturesque harbor of Nyhavn and down the walking/shopping street of Stroget.  After this brisk walk, I showed them my apartment, which despite all my hard work, had gotten really dirty again in a matter of hours.  After having a minor heart attack, my mom decided it would be best if we left.  So, we headed to an adorable Italian restaurant by my apartment and chowed down on some delicious Italian food in a truly hygge setting. After the perfect dinner, we went to a bakery inside of  a cozy library for an even more perfect desert.   

Day 2-

Today we got an early start on our morning by heading all the way to Norrebro (what Danes consider to be the ghetto but it's not even close to being an actual ghetto...), to see the daycare that I work in.  The kids were so cute (as usual), and they really loved my mom and dad.  After this, we headed over to the Rosenborg Palace to see the crown jewels (which are so magnificently beautiful, I literally couldn't take my eyes off them!).  After a tour of Rosenborg, we were able to head over to Nyhavn to catch a boat to do a Canal Tour of the entire city.  Unfortunately, my parents were still a bit jet lagged, and I had to keep elbowing them to stay awake and soak in the sights of the city.  Once we got off the boat, however, the icy winds of Copenhagen seemed to perk them up a bit! Well, at least enough for a little bit of shopping!  After hitting all the good stores, we picked up Jenny for a wonderful dinner at Cafe G, and then headed back to our favorite library-bakery for some delicious dessert.  

Day 3-

My dad took more advil pm last night.  Not wise.  After watching him drag is feet through all of breakfast, I think it was safe to say that I was a little bit concerned about how his disposition would be throughout the rest of the day.  Regardless, we headed out from the hotel and to the train station to head to the stately castle of Frederiksberg.  What a beautiful place.  Although it is about 45 minutes outside of the city, it is well worth the trip.  Inside the castle there is a ton of cool architecture and art and outside the castle is surrounded by beautiful gardens.  After exploring this area for a few hours, we headed back into Copenhagen to relax a little bit before we met up with Anne and her relatives from Zurich for a wonderful dinner.  Food, wine, and conversation was plentiful and we couldn't have had a more wonderful time.  Except for the fact that the ice cream place that I had been so excited to go to was closed.  Bummer.

Day 4-

Today was also a big day for the Fergusons.  After a nice leisurely breakfast, we headed to Malmo, Sweden!  We saw the sites, and walked through a gigantic park that is so so so pretty.  After this, we went up and down the shopping street of Malmo, then hopped back on the train and started our short journey home.  Although we were a little pooped from our journey to Sweden, we mustered up enough energy to head to Tivoli!  My dad and I immediately bought tickets for the scariest ride there- the Star Flyer!  This is  like a typical carnival swings ride...except for the fact that it goes up hundreds of feet in the air.  Needless to say, my mom stayed on the ground.  Although it was a little bit windy and cold at the high altitude of the swing, we were able to get the most amazing view of every corner of the city.  After a wonderful time exploring Tivoli, we went back to Stroget to get a big, juicy, GLORIOUS, burger to end our day.

Day 5-

The last day :(.  But we made it count!  After another long breakfast, we went to the Amelienborg Palace where we explored the museum and watched the changing of the guards.  Inside the museum, we got to see all of the offices of some of the most famous monarchs as well as some of their clothes!  Naturally my mom and I loved looking at all the queen's dresses, and especially her wedding dress! (I've been deprived of Say Yes to the Dress for 2 months now...)  After all this, we headed to the Glyptotek museum to check out some ancient sculptures, as well as a bunch of impressionist and post-impressionist paintings.  Once we had seen all the sites in the museum we headed out and back to our favorite spot in Copenhagen- the library bakery.  We sat there and chatted until the last minute when they sadly had to head to the airport.  

Overall, and amazing weekend and one I would be hard pressed to forget.  Unfortunately, I was snapped back to reality today in class with the realization that I actually have work to do this week before I leave on my two week trip! IN FIVE DAYS! AHHHH! Florence, Rome, Canary Islands, Barcelona, Paris- Here I come!

Ooodles of love!

xoxoxoxoxo

Mandy

Pictures from London and Dublin!

London Town

After a short blog-hiatus, I'm back in the game!  And with wonderful stories and memories from London and Dublin! Anyways, you're probably thinking "Mandy, how were you able to pick up and leave for 10 days?  Don't you go to school??" Well, the answer is yes, I do go to school, but as part of my child development class we go to London for a week, and then we had the weekend to travel. So basically we had a few academic visits throughout the week in London combined with a ton of time to sightsee on our own. So starting from the beginning, here are a recap of my adventures from the UK and Ireland...

The Beginning-
After a bright and early wake-up call, Jenny and I headed to the Norwegian Air ticket counter at the Copenhagen airport where we met the rest of our class.  From there we hopped on a plane and headed to London!  After a quick 2 hour flight we touched down in London town and began our bus adventure to the hotel we were staying in.  After a little lunch and unpacking we headed to our first academic visit of the trip which was to a crazy "adventure playground" where the kids essentially run rampant and climb high structures with no rules.  After having 5-6 minor heart attacks at the playground (from watching these kids swing from bridges 2 stories off the ground) our class headed for dinner at a Pakistani/Indian restaurant (we are studying multiculturalism, so we sampled various types of food throughout our stay), and then to the London Eye where we got a beautiful view of the city and all its attractions.  After this, everyone was exhausted and just headed back to the hotel to get a well deserved good night's sleep.  And so began the London trip...

The Middle
So throughout the week we saw a bunch of different schools including an all Muslim school and mosque.  All of this was super interesting and cool to me because before I took this class, I didn't really have any kind of understanding of Islam and its fundamental beliefs.  We also saw an extracurricular organization called CARE which used a local professional soccer team (in Greenwich) to unity and teamwork through athletics.  So basically, all of our "academic" visits were really cool and they were hardly academic and mostly just involved me playing with kids for a couple hours. Perfect.  When we weren't doing any of these school visits, we had time to sightsee on our own or in our group.  On one of the first days, we took a bus tour of London and hit most of the big sights including: The tower of London, Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace, St. Paul's Cathedral, and some other sights that I'm right now forgetting.  In my spare time I also made it to Kensington Gardens/Palace, Notting Hill, and Abbey Road.  All in all a pretty successful tour of London.  One of the nights we also got to go and see Avenue Q- which was amazingly funny.  This night of the trip was probably one of the most memorable due to a certain incident.  While I was getting on the tube, there was a whole crowd of people getting on behind me.  Somewhere in the shuffle, a woman kicked the back of my foot and sent my shoe flying underneath the train tracks.  As I turned around in horror the doors of the train closed and we started heading to the next stop.  Now this doesn't seem so bad, but keep in mind I have 1/2 hour to make it to dinner and then to a play.  So that eliminated any possibility of going back to the hotel and grabbing another pair of shoes. So like a true friend, Jenny gave me her sock until I could purchase another pair of shoes (I cant go to a play in London without shoes!) So we ran off the tube and started searching London for a place to buy shoes.  Boots, flats, heels, slippers for all I care!  The problem with London is that "cheap shoes" is an oxymoron.  They don't exist.  After an hour of searching the London streets in one shoe and one sock, Jenny and I decided we had to take a break to join our class for dinner.  We finally found the restaurant and scarfed down some pretty decent Chinese food.  And then the search party began again.  Finally, I spotted and angel in the form of a TJ Maxx across the street.  Jenny and I ran in, found the cheapest pair of shoes money could buy, and made it back to the playhouse just in time to see the beginning of Avenue Q.  Although I did get ridiculed the rest of the trip for not "minding the gap," the whole ordeal made for a pretty laughable story.  The only other good story I have from this part of my trip is that I met Johnny Depp while he was filming the Pirates of the Caribbean 4.  What a hunk.

The End
So after our wonderful time in London, Jenny and I headed to Dublin to meet up with our friend Raymond.  Our first full day there, Jenny and I took ourselves on a walking tour of Dublin, hitting all the good sites and even going in some museums and culturing ourselves.  Once we were through with that, we met up with Raymond and he showed us around Trinity and we hung out with a bunch of his new friends at school.  The next morning we woke up super early for a bus tour of the Irish countryside.  This was so beautiful and I would totally recommend it to anyone visiting Dublin.  Once back, Raymond took us to a traditional pub dinner and to some of the local bars and such.  I even overcame my fear of beer and tried a Guinness, which to my surprise, wasn't so bad.  After a wonderful weekend of Irish festivities Jenny and I finally headed home- to Copenhagen.

Whew, what a long post, but I've been gone so long so I think it's ok.

Much love,
Mandy