Kongens Have and Rosenborg Slot

Pictures from this one outing seem to be taking FOREVER for me to get posted! Sorry about that! For those who haven't heard yet, we are expecting Baby #2 and I haven't been feeling that hot this time around. I can't decided if it's just the difference of having a toddler to chase around this time or if I really do feel more sick and exhausted. Probably a combination of both... Anyhow, this picture is from the children's puppet theater in the park. They do two shows a day and change out the show every month or so.


Here's a picture of Rosenborg Castle. From the picture it looks like we're so far away and in the middle of nowhere. Actually, it's just a pretty puny castle and right in teh middle of the city. Of course the garden surrounds it for a few city blocks, but that's it!




Ruby is fascinated with all kinds of birds and water. She was whining like crazy wanting to walk around. We did let her get down for a few minutes, but she was just ready to chase those ducks into the nasty moat (yes, that water is the moat surrounding the castle), so she had to go back into her stroller much to her dismay.

Another picture of the puppet theater. At first I wasn't sure if the guy in green was a person or a marionette--he was real! Later in the story a little marionette puppet man takes his place, but he looked very "puppetish" so it was obvious. I guess it sounds a bit dumb to originally have wondered if this guy was living and breathing, but I didn't think that there would be "people" in a puppet show--silly me!


Here's one last picture of the castle. Maybe next time we'll see the crown jewels...

Canal Tour - Part Two

There are actually only a few more pictures left from our canal tour. I'll start with those and then we'll move along to where we spent the remainder of the day, Rosenborg Slot (Castle) and Kongens Have (King's Garden) right in the heart of København.

Jared caught Ruby in a rare happy moment on the tour. She really did like to look over the edge of the boat, but I was too chicken to let her hang out too much! I sure didn't want to have to try to leap in after her if she fell (which of course we would!).

This is the old Stock Exchange (Børsen). This picture doesn't show it well, but the spire is made up of three dragon's tails intertwined. They represent the three Scandinavian countries: Norway, Sweden, and Denmark.

The final picture from our tour is of the unfinished Theater. It has a very similar look to it as the Opera House, but I'm not sure if they are by the same architect or not.

The King's Garden, which surrounds Rosenborg Castle right in the middle of the city, is really quite beautiful, even though when we went there weren't many flowers due to the dry hot weather we'd been having. We thought that these shaded paths were so pleasant, especially in the heat and impressive in that each tree was shaped and they were HUGE!

Here you can see Rosenborg Castle itself. It's a small castle from the early 1600s which now houses the crown jewels. We didn't go inside to see them this visit as we were told there are no strollers allowed and you have to be quiet. Two stipulations that we can't hold to when Ruby's along!

I think that I'll just finish up with the castle and garden pictures in another post. Blogger really makes things hard on you if you try to have more than 5 pictures per entry...

Canal Tour - Part One

A few weeks ago Jared was able to get a day off in the middle of the week because the ventilation system was down for his building. It ended up being a beautiful day, so we decided to go on one of the very popular canal tours downtown. These pictures are from the tour. I'm going to pretty much just label them becuase I was holding a VERY squirmy Ruby and taking pictures, so I didn't catch all that much of the backstory. Also, our tour guide repeated everything four times in English, German, Spanish, and Danish. You'd think that would be a good thing, but sometimes I had a hard time honing in on the language I knew best!

Several of the tour companies start here in Nyhavn. Even though the name means "New Harbor" it's actually one of the oldest in Copenhagen.

As you can see, Ruby was all ready for the sunny ride with her pretty sun hat. She always manages to get it pushed w-a-y up though so that it barely shades her face. Thank goodness for sunscreen.

Here's a picture of our very talented tour guide. I was so impressed that he could switch between 4 languages with ease. Of course he does do the same tour a zillion times a day!

The yellow house is one that Hans Christian Andersen lived in. H.C. Andersen and his fairy tales are probably one of the most well known parts of Denmark. He apparently loved the lively atmosphere around Nyhavn.

The white house is another of H.C. Andersen's homes. I can't even imagine how expensive these apartments would be today, but I suppose in his day there were a lot of undesirables down here.

You may have to click on the picture to get a good look, but this canal boat that we passed was FULL of Santas, Mrs. Clauses, and even a few reindeers. There was a big Santa convention out at Bakken for several days and apparently this was Santa's "Day in the Sun"!

The Copenhagen Opera House (Operaen) was just opened in January 2005. Designed by Henning Larsen, this world-class facility sits on the former Royal Naval Dockyard. This is where Jared and I were supposed to go a few months ago, but never made it! Hopefully we'll get the chance again some day.

Here is a picture of a motorhome in Christiania. Christiania is an autonomous community that started 33 years ago following the civil occupation of an unused area, then owned by the Ministry of Defence. It's sort of a "hippie commune" full of artists, environmentalists, etc. If you want to read more about Christiania, check out this website.

This is part of the Royal Danish Naval acadamy and shipyards. I really don't remember much about what they said, except that they do cannon salutes every morning.

This is H.C. Andersen's "Little Mermaid" as seen from the water. There are ALWAYS hoards of people crowding around the little mermaid which is rather odd I think. It's not that spectacular of a statue to be honest!

In this picture, you can see Amalienborg (where the royal family lives, at least part of the time). Amalienborg is made up of four mansions. They were originally supposed to be "guest residences" for visiting royalty. The day we went, none of the royal family was home--which is evident by the fact that there are no flags flying. The big dome in the background is the Marble Church. It has a huge dome, but feels somewhat like a masoleum inside... I didn't like it much!

Well, I think I'll end with that for now. Blogger doesn't seem to want me to add any more pictures so I'll finish the tour another time. Hope this wets your appetite to come see the sights and sounds of Copenhagen with your own eyes!

FIBC Men's Quartet Sings, "Ride The Chariot"

Fun at Home & The Zoo

Ruby and I hit the zoo (again!) to check on the progress of our trunked friend and some of the other baby animals. You actually can't even tell in this picture, but these are two of the three brown bear cubs. They were really being pretty funny while we were there--wrestling around and generally trying to get mom's attention (THAT sounds familar!). It was a hot day and Mama Bear decided to go down the steep steps to the water. One by one the cubs followed her, except for the last cub who decided to leap down (really a LONG drop) and landed right on mom--that'll get her attention!

Ruby's favorite animals this time were the birds (always a favorite) and the giraffes. One of the giraffes had decided that he needed to get this succulent weed that was down in the gully between the giraffe "area" and where the public stands. Imagine a giraffe just about doing the splits trying to reach something lower than its feet--it really was a hoot! Then, of course, he kept losing it, so this happened repeatedly. Just when he had it good another giraffe came over and decided he wanted to "share". Eventually the first giraffe gave up and dropped the weed on top of the second one's head. He just stood up and started walking around with it up there--none the wiser! It was just too funny. Finally it fell off and some little antelope swiped it up and chomped it down before the giraffes even knew what was going on!

We had to check up on the baby elephant (of course!). He was finally outside with all the females and seemed to be enjoying it quite a bit. I was surprised how much he had grown and he really looks much cuter now that his eyes are fairly normal and he's getting his thicker skin! We didn't have any run-ins with delinquent donkeys this trip, though I must admit I wasn't really that crazy about hanging around the petting zoo. I'd like to go home with all my fingers thank you very much!

Around the house, Ruby has really started to enjoy looking at her books on her own. She has own book in particular that has little slider windows for each letter of the alphabet with something hidden underneath (ex. A is for Ant). She really could spend a lot of time opening and closing those little windows. She also loves the textured books and anything with flaps!

One of her other favorite things to do is crawl up into a chair with a bunch of stuffed animals. After getting all cozy, she proceeds to throw them all down and then signs, "Help!", which means she wants me to pick them up so she can start all over again. While I'm thrilled she's using her sign language, I do need to be careful not to let the cuteness of it all manipulate me into doing her bidding! We've learned that there does need to be some ignoring so that she'll attempt to do these things on her own!

Well, I'll end today with another spaghetti eating snapshot. You'll notice that while she is eating the spaghetti with her hands, she sure has gotten a lot tidier at it! Just a little blob on her chin with hardly any on her bib or the table--hurray!

I hope to be able to put up the recording of Jared's Men's Quartet soon... If Ruby decides to take a good nap today I might just get it done, we'll see!

Bellevue Beach

We have been enjoying the steamy weather this summer with lots of trips in the great outdoors. These are a few pictures from our trip to Bellevue Beach in Klampenborg (about an hour from home by bus and train). This beach has long been a very popular spot for catching rays and maybe a boyfriend! Known as the "Flypaper" this artificial beach is really pretty nice with changing huts, showers, and the ever important ice cream stand. Apparently the idea for building the beach actually came from a small ice cream company. They agreed to back the project as long as they had exclusive rights on ice cream sales!

It's actually a really neat beach because you can see the big ships as well as some old (or at least they look old) tall ships out in the sea. I suppse the big cargo ships are mostly heading to or from Copenhagen as it does seem to be a fairly large port city. We didn't see any cruise ships, but apparently they are quite frequent as well since Copenhagen was just voted most popular port city for Europe--wow!

Ruby really loved playing in the sand and wasn't even fazed when Jared buried her in sand--she seemed to think that was pretty fun. I thought this picture was cute with her little toes sticking out. We also got bucket loads of water for her which she enjoyed filling with sand and then pouring the wet glop out all over the place. Needless to say, we were VERY happy that they had a shower because she was an absolute mess covered in sand from head to toe.

One thing I was a bit worried about going to the beach here is the nudity. I was happy to see that really there was very little nudity where we were at (apparently there is a nudist area). The main difference is that women often seem to just wear their underwear to sunbath instead of a swimming suit--strange, but at least they're covered up!

As we discovered in Michigan, Ru is quite the water baby and loved to walk in the surf. I let Daddy take the lead in that arena because I personally get a bit grossed out by all the seaweed, etc. on the shoreline. Once we got out into the water, it was quite nice though. It's been one of the warmest summers in a LONG time, so the water has gotten quite a bit warmer than usual. This has caused some problems though with lots more jelly fish than normal as well as a huge population explosion of algae. Apparently having too much exposure to the algae is not good for your health so I think some of the beaches have even been closed. This one, thankfully, was clear and clean--not even any jelly fish!

Back to the Jungle

The blogging thing has really gotten hard to keep up with this summer! We seem to be on the go SO much that just posting once a week is getting tougher and tougher, meanwhile we keep doing more and more things that I'd love to post about--arg! I have a feeling I'll still be catching up when autumn hits...

That said here are a few pictures from the day we got back home (to Copenhagen, that is!). It had been hot the whole time we were away with only one day of rain, so the garden was absolutely wild and the lawn was dead! I took this picture through our kitchen window when I spotted Ruby working just as hard dirtying the patio as Jared was working trying to get things cleaned up. She loves to "help", but often times her help just makes things more difficult! I think that's pretty typical though.

We ended up letting Ruby use her sand toys in this flowerless pot. It makes a mess, but it keeps her busy! We'd love to get her a sandbox, but with a cat of our own and lots of neighborhood cats we'd need a covered one and we haven't spotted one at any of the flea markets this summer--I'm sure they're hot items!

It did seem to take us quite a long time to get adjusted when we came home. Ruby really had a tough time and was very clingy for about a week. Just when Jared and I didn't think we could take another day of it, she was back to her normal self and playing great--we think that a couple of molars coming in may have been partially to blame for her crankiness. Thankfully we're through MOST of the teething. Only six baby teeth left to come in--HURRAH!