Monday, August 13

After a quiet morning at home we went for a wander around Roskilde and the shops were open. In the general excitement, I said to the kids that they could wander around and buy something while Mr. Waffle and I had a cup of tea. The upshot of this was that Michael ended up spending €30 on a hoptomist which, design classic or no, is basically something you could have picked up in a €2 shop at home. It was broken by the end of the day also, but we plan to superglue his head back on so, not a complete loss (currently in the “to do” side of the ledger). I very actively considered buying a Danish birthday calendar which featured extravagant Danish flag imagery on every page (the most modest was November where the picture was of a girl doing her homework with a small Danish flag on her desk because, of course) but I managed to restrain myself.

I was still dutifully doing my Danish lessons on the phone (duolingo, since you ask) but I was finding the rather limited vocabulary which featured turtles strongly less useful than I would have hoped. A turtle is en skildpadde which is more difficult to work into conversation than you might expect. Though Mr. Waffle did find this at the supermarket.

Michael found lucky galoshes and finished “Why Nations Fail”, the latter to general sighs of relief from the rest of us.

The plum wastage had been gnawing away at me inside so while the children kindly made dinner Mr. Waffle and I went for a stroll by the seaside and picked plums.

Tuesday, August 14

We went back to Copenhagen to spend the day in Tivoli. This proposal was greeted with initial suspicion by the children who have been fooled once too often by their parents’ saying that something would be great fun and having it turn out to be another opportunity to inspect medieval butter knives. However, following close inspection of the Tivoli website, they were pleased to approve this proposal.

It was one of the best days ever. Before I went I had heard of Tivoli but I thought that it was a palace garden or something like that. It’s not, it’s a fun park (175 years old this year). It’s like something in a film or a Norman Rockwell drawing of a fun park. It’s quite beautiful to look at.

There were no queues for any of the rides and we let the children off to enjoy themselves. They truly did.

The park has more than 30 restaurants and we had lunch and dinner there. There was a concert, there was a parade, there were deckchairs where Mr. Waffle and I could sit in the sun. There was a shop with Danish designer stuff and a very nice tearoom.

They even had the horse racing game that we played in the funfair museum in Paris last summer.

I kept comparing the experience very favourably with our trip to Disneyland Paris last summer which was pretty grim. The complete absence of queues was delightful. The area is small and we could just let the children go and do what they wanted and meet with them later without worrying that they might be lost forever. I would go back again like a shot.

Lads, they even had en skidpadde:

While I was in Denmark I read a book by an English journalist about the Nordic countries and he said that Tivoli is so central to the Danish identity that when Iceland was rich – before the crash – and they were buying up Danish brands, at Denmark v Iceland football matches, Icelandic fans chanted “We’re coming for Tivoli next”. Iceland and Denmark enjoy an interesting relationship. I recommend this Icelandic comedian’s turn for some mild appreciation of this. I digress. Basically, Tivoli is amazing and you should definitely bring your children there and forget EuroDisney.

Wednesday 15 August

We had a quiet day following our extravaganza in Tivoli the day before. Mr. Waffle and I abandoned the children to their fate mid-afternoon and went into Copenhagen for a stroll followed by dinner at a very nice restaurant where we spent their inheritance. I never fully got my head around the conversion from crowns to euros (hence the €30 hoptomist) but even I could tell that we had possibly enjoyed our most expensive dinner ever in a relationship characterised by a love of expensive dining. We got the most amazing brioche and due to the quantity of food we needed to get through, I was unable to finish it. To the almost concealed shock and horror of the four staff lovingly tending to our needs, I asked whether we could possibly take the remaining brioche home as I knew it was going to go in the bin. When the bill came, one of our waiters came out with a plastic box with a sticker with the restaurant’s logo on it and a full new brioche inside. I was pleased.

After our enormous dinner, Mr. Waffle and I wandered around the delightful streets of Copenhagen.

When we got home, I gave some brioche to herself (babysitter in chief) who was sitting up and it was still delicious but by the next morning it was stale (photographed post late night depredations below). Alas. And the toasting arrangements were, as described earlier, suboptimal.

Thursday August 16

We all went in to Copenhagen again. We went to the Guinness book of records museum and the Ripley’s believe it or not which were both commercial linked enterprises, curiously dated and not at all right on. The Guinness one, in particular felt almost voyeuristic looking at pictures of these misfortunate people who were clearly ill and died young (tallest, fattest, most bicycles eaten). Ripley’s was a bit more three headed calf, largest snake etc but there were some unsavoury aspects to this also. On the plus side, Michael discovered in himself a talent for cup stacking.

We were pretty much alone aside from another family who were speaking in a language I could not place: Dutch, German, Afrikaans, something else? “Luxembourgish” said my genius husband. Because I have no shame, I checked. They were quite pleased as, apparently, no one ever recognises Luxembourgish. When they heard we were Irish, they were extremely excited. “Do you know Rea Garvey?” asked the son. “Who?” we said in unison. “See,” said the boy to his mother, “I told you no one knew him in Ireland.” She was disbelieving but it’s true; he may be a star in Luxembourg but in his home country we have never heard of him. Or, Irish people, are we just out of touch?

We went to La Glace café again because I enjoy spending my children’s inheritance on expensive buns as well as elaborate dinners.

We went home and had another walk on the beach to recover from our day in the big city.

Friday, August 17

Our last full day in the socialist paradise. Mr Waffle and I decided to have a wander around the tiny local town of Vellerup which we had consistently bypassed on the way to the greater excitements of Kirke Hyllinge (two supermarkets – a Meny and a Facta). It was pretty in a tiny village kind of way with a church and a duckpond.

Graveyards in Denmark are immaculately kept with little box hedges around the plots and hoes and watering cans to hand for grieving relatives to keep them in good nick.

OK, sample size 2 (in fairness, I didn’t spend all my time in Denmark visiting graveyards) but I bet they are all like that.

Daniel said of Denmark at one point, “It’s like Disneyland, only real.” I know what he meant, the countryside is dotted with lovely little houses appropriate to their setting. There are no hacienda style bungalows or, in fact, anything that looks out of place and it is super-clean. I was struck by how few pigeons and seagulls there were in the towns and even in Copenhagen and, basically, it’s because they are so clean. Whereas you will regularly see seagulls foraging in the bins and eating on the streets of Dublin and whole flocks of pigeons pretty much everywhere, this phenomenon seems unknown in Denmark or at least the parts I visited. It was enchanting and a little bit like living in a flag bedecked fairy tale land. Look at the careful children sign, look at it; isn’t it lovely?

In the afternoon, I singularly failed to get any of the family to come with me to visit the local big house – Selso Slot. I set off on my own. My first adventure was managing to fill the car with petrol at a self-service petrol station. Low level of achievement you might think but I was pretty pleased with myself navigating the Danish petrol experience. Sometimes, I think I probably need to get out on my own a bit more.

I loved Selso Slot – it was owned by an important Danish figure in the 1700s (von Plessel – nope, me neither) and his niece by marriage ended up living there alone until she died in 1829 and it was just left empty until the 70s when a couple bought it and tried to do it up. Now, as far as I can work out, it’s part of a trust owned by the family. I had the place to myself.

There was a young woman working in the shop and I asked if she was a student working there for the summer to make conversation and she said no that she was the museum and castle director. I think I have now reached the age where everyone under 35 looks about 14 to me. Once we got over that slightly unpromising start to our relationship, I was able to ask her loads of questions about the house and she was very knowledgeable and interesting. I also asked her about the role of the turtle in the lives of Danes and she opined, cautiously that although the words in the sentence “En skildpadde spiser ost” made sense individually the sentence itself was a bit unlikely. She gave me some invaluable assistance on how to pronounce the letter d in Danish words. I bought a postcard from her. I thought it was 40 crowns and a fortnight of Danish living prepared me for paying over a fiver for a postcard but in fact it was only 4 which is about 50 cents. My new friend was appalled at the prospect of me spending a fiver on a postcard as, it turns out, the Danes are pretty thrifty and great bargain hunters. I suppose that they need to be.

The castle itself was like a film set. Great dilapidated rooms with a sense of grandeur and romance (now waterproof since the work on the roof last year). I really loved it.

I went for a cup of tea in Skibby. Tea room in a glass house in the supermarket car park; not entirely perfect but in rural Denmark, you take what you can get in the line of tea rooms.

Later in the afternoon Daniel and I went for a final paddle down to the ice cream kiosk in the kayaks.

We all had a last walk on the beach.

And I baked the plums.

Saturday, August 18

We said goodbye to our lovely house.

The drive to the airport was uneventful but the trip through the airport took a lot out of all of us. I managed to put the baggage tags on wrongly when doing the self service check-in (you cannot judge me as harshly as I do myself for this schoolboy error) so we had to queue and do it again; Mr. Waffle inadvertently printed out the wrong boarding passes for the boys and we found this out after the Princess and I had passed through the self-service control but before he and the boys had, so we had to split up and the boys had quite a tense time with their father going to the Ryanair desk (he swears never again) before managing to locate copies of the passes on Dropbox (wonderful Dropbox). Meanwhile I had realised that I had checked in the only copy of our house and car keys we brought with us in the hold baggage because right at the start of the holiday I had put them in a pocket in my washbag so that we wouldn’t forget them. In one way, my plan totally worked but it probably needs some refinement. Our luggage did not get lost and we were at home and cleaning up cat vomit from Daniel’s bed room rug by mid-afternoon.

Would I do it again? Absolutely, we all really liked Denmark. My only caveat, and it’s a significant one, is that it’s really dear. As my father says, everything multiplied by five is expensive and for a family holiday Denmark is expensive. But it is lovely. And it has a very hygge flag.

Wednesday, August 8

The unbearable heat continued and, learning our lesson from the previous day’s mild outing, we stayed largely at home.

We swam, we kayaked and we went to the supermarket. We asked the woman at the checkout whether there was in anywhere in Kirke Hyllige (our local village) that might provide us with a cup of tea. She looked like she thought we were absolutely crazy. No, there was not. It turns out that rural Denmark does not have a thriving café culture.

What rural Denmark does have is guacamole in a tin (unbelievably revolting notwithstanding being 1.5% avocado) and just add avocado guacamole in a packet.

Also sunsets, great sunsets.

Thursday, August 9

After practically not leaving the house on the previous day, I felt obliged to force everyone out. We went in to the Viking museum in Roskilde. This features 5 original Viking boats that they dredged up from the harbour and put together again like the world’s largest jigsaw.

Thrillingly, one of them was made in Ireland (they could tell by the wood apparently – if I understood correctly, it was made in Glendalough but that seems an unlikely degree of specificity in relation to a 1000 year old boat dredged up from the bottom of the ocean – I watched bits of the educational video in Dutch, Italian and Spanish but English never seemed to come up so my understanding may not have been 100%). Everyone who worked there when they heard we were Irish was keen to tell us about the Irish boat.

There was a Viking boatyard where they made Viking boats using original Viking tools (is that a bit too authentic?). I took lots of pictures for Michael to show to his woodwork teacher but he said that I had fundamentally misunderstood the nature of teacher/student interaction and he would not be sharing them.

There was a place for hammering out coins, a forge (the heat, the unbearable heat), a chance to paint your own Viking shield and, of course, lots of boats – the originals and the reconstructions which you could wander on to. All of the Danish staff were cowering in the shade assuring us that the weather was never like this normally.

We went for what would have been quite a nice lunch on site if we hadn’t been rushing back to take our sailing trip on a reconstructed Viking boat. The sailing trip was a mild highlight. We rowed out in to the bay and then the staff member who was captaining the boat and slightly despairing of the abilities of his motley crew asked who would like to steer. Almost before he had finished asking, Michael was up at the tiller. Did he enjoy it? Very much. Was he any good at steering? Maybe a bit less so but he learnt a great deal on the trip and we definitely didn’t capsize.

I bought a small wooden Danish flag and flagpole in the gift shop. You wouldn’t understand, you weren’t there.

On the drive home, Michael regaled us with the reasons for the collapse of the Venetian city state so that by the time we got back we were all ready to walk to the ice cream kiosk. It was a chance for me to mull on the wasteful ways of the Danes as we walked there on a carpet of ripe plums.

That night there was a storm. I was worried about herself in the annex. She was fine although she did say that she did not enjoy the sound of the rats with their scrabbly paws under her annex built on decking. They were probably sheltering from the rain with a supply of plums.

I think it was on this evening that the boys wanted to look at the lightening and I said, “It’s not lightening, it’s fireworks.” It was lightening, impressive lightening.

Friday, August 10

We plucked up our courage and drove in to Copenhagen. It was only about an hour away. We thought that as it was a cycling paradise we might run into some problems with the car. Cycling paradise it may be but, it turns out, there are still plenty of cars.

Also we found the sat nav (whom we christened Sybil because she definitely sounded like a Sybil) invaluable. Sybil guided us safely to a multi-storey car park where the parking was pricey (€40 for 6 hours so not atypical of Danish prices) but there was plenty of it and a great view from the roof where we ended up parking.

Excellent photo of roof view; maybe not fantastic photo of us.

We had lunch nearby which was grand but not amazing actually, in general, we found the food a bit mediocre; I’m not sure whether it was down to our restaurant choosing skills or Danish cuisine. After lunch we wandered down to the Amalienborg slot (castle, try to keep up) and after some judicious consideration decided that we would gain as much if not more from looking at the outside rather than going in for a tour.

We dutifully went down to Nyhavn which is right up there with the Little Mermaid in the famous views of Copenhagen postcards. We actually passed it on the way in but due to complete reliance on Sybil, we failed to look around so missed it.

We went on a boat trip which was grand in the manner of these things. We saw the Little Mermaid and various other worthy sights. I have come away from Denmark wondering how many castles one royal family needs. By way of example, a castle in the North of Zealand (the island bit that Copenhagen is on and where we were staying – we didn’t get as far as Jutland which, although attached to the European mainland boasts the more remote parts of Denmark) was advertised as “one of the Queen’s favourite summer castles”.

The boat also circled the Danish royal yacht which is called, of course it is, the Dannebrog which means the Danish flag. Is anyone surprised by this?

We went for a cup of coffee in Conditori La Glace which got great billing in our guidebook. I have to say, they were not wrong. Really excellent cakes. Michael does not like sweet things so he had a bread roll. Sometimes I wonder where this child of mine came from. Notwithstanding assistance from google maps, we managed to get lost on the walk back to the car park so had an opportunity to explore the canals and also the outside of what I think was the architecture museum which incorporated slides and a net for climbing in a very cool Danish way.

Saturday, August 11

We had a quiet morning after the activity in Copenhagen the previous day. In the afternoon we went into Roskilde. It turns out that everything in Denmark closes at 2 on a Saturday. Who knew? The city centre was, yet again, like a morgue and even the tourist information was closed. Who, who closes tourist information offices at 2 on Saturday? And yet, a part of me rejoices that commerce hasn’t overtaken everything and that shop workers as well as office workers get to enjoy their weekends. That part was not uppermost as we took ourselves to the out of town Lidl (open, happily) and ran from the shop to the car park in the lashing rain.

However, on the good news front, although the cathedral was closed at 2, there was a sign saying that it would reopen at 4 so after a restorative cup of tea in the square, we took ourselves inside. I am a veteran of cathedral visits and, I have to say, this was an impressive one. Even the children found it mildly interesting. Seriously recommended if you find yourself in the area. Most of the kings and queens of Denmark since Margarethe I in the 1400s are buried here and some of them really went all out in the chapel design. A couple of pre-Margarethe kings are buried here also. If you’re looking for the body of Harald Bluetooth, the man who gave us wireless connectivity, look no further, he’s been here since about 986. Controversially the French (and slightly grumpy) prince consort who died earlier this year decided he didn’t want to be buried in Roskilde. Nevertheless the queen has a large sarcophagus for herself in situ and more or less ready to go for when the moment arrives. Good planners, the Danes.

The queue of anxious tourists hoping to shuffle into Roskilde cathedral when it reopens:

Detail of painting in one of the chapels (William Morris, how are you?), there were many, many very beautiful patterns painted all over some of the chapel walls:

The cathedral is made largely of brick which is a big part of why it has the UNESCO world heritage label as you don’t see so many elaborate brick buildings dating from the 12th century.

Well worth the wait in the queue.

Sunday, August 12

We took the bridge to Sweden. It was very thrilling.

I drove and one of the disadvantages of our hired car over slightly longer distances became clear. The driver’s seat had a button which pushed it forward automatically. Either I am too short for the Qashqai or we never figured out how the buttons worked properly. My little arms were stretched out in front of me to their fullest extent and, as we crossed the bridge, I started to get pins and needles in one arm and waved it about to the general discomfiture of my passengers who opined that we were all going to die. We went to Lund as I had been there at a conference years ago and liked it.

After Roskilde the day before, I am forced to concede that Lund cathedral was a bit underwhelming.

It did have an astronomical clock though.

After the priciness of Denmark, Sweden seemed really cheap and cheerful. I bought a Moomin mug for €15 and was delighted with myself until my husband pointed out that a) I’d just spent 15 quid on a mug and b) the Moomins are Finnish. Subsequently I saw the exact same mug in Denmark for €21 so I was relieved that I had made a killing after all.

We went for lunch in a student burger joint (Lund is a university town) which was surprisingly tasty. I was astonished to see that they had a sign outside saying “no cash”. Apparently Sweden is one of the world’s most cashless societies but somehow, I always thought cash would be king in a student burger place.

Lund boasts an open air museum with lots of different traditional houses. I love this kind of thing so we went there. Herself pointed out that thanks to this obsession of mine she knows more about how blacksmiths operated in the 19th century than she does about paying electricity bills and observed that I may not be preparing her for life in the 21st century. “I bet,” she added “that we will see loving examples of early butter knives.” We did see loving examples of early butter knives.

At least there were no people dressed in clothes from the relevant periods guiding us around. The place was slightly run down and quite empty but, I must say I found it delightful.

For those of you who have spent time in IKEA, you will be pleased to hear that there was a house from Småland carried safely from there to Lund for educational purposes.

There was a Jane Austen exhibition looking at the dramatisation of her work including original costumes from the BBC best ever Pride and Prejudice adaptation which some of us quite enjoyed.

When we got safely home (thanks Sybil) it was late; after dinner and a brief row over the adapters for charging the phones, we all went to bed. Top tip, if you have a family with five phones; bring more than four adapters on holidays. If you must only bring four, make sure that they all work.

People, we’ve still almost a week to go. Can you face it?