Quiet day, Kayaking

After Tivoli, the next day we didn't do much, but we explored the area around our townhouse building, and found two things, and I made a hat and sword for Tobin. First, we found a bunch of outdoor exercise equipment, including a machine where you swung your legs from side to side, and one where you put each foot on a platform, and swung them forward and back, like you were walking in a strange way. I wouldn't call them exercising, but they were fun, and there was a lot of kids playing on the other structures as well, including parallel bars, monkey bars and two balance beams. Second, I might not have mentioned it, but there's a moat that goes halfway around our building, and we found out that you can rent kayaks for free (if you live in the building). They weren't racing kayaks or anything, they were just recreational kayaks, but they were fun. Around the side of the moat there are daffodils and other plants growing in clumps, and there were about a million frogs. I tried to catch them from my kayak, but it kept drifting away so I decided I'd come back later from the shore. Along with kayaks, there were two plastic row boats as well, and Julias went in one of those. Tobin went in a single kayak most of the time, of which there were two, and there were three tri-yaks.
About the hat: Tobin watched pirates of the Caribbean recently, and so afterwards he wanted to be a pirate captain, so he needed me to make a pirate hat out of the rectangle piece of card that was in the house. So I did, and personally, I'm pretty impressed with myself.
About the sword: I carved a twisty sword for him the next day or so, with my little leatherman, out of a stick I found in the pond. I braced a thin bit of it with a failed sycamore whistle I made back in the UK.

Tivoli

A couple of days ago we went to Tivoli, one of the first amusement parks. Because it doesn't have to travel around, it can have rides like roller coasters and buildings, stores and restaurants. Also, we noticed at west coast amusements, the ride attendants are usually kind of weird because they have to travel around with the fair, whereas everyone worming at Tivoli can go home after work so they're more like normal people.
Tivoli isn't just a fair, though. It's like a fair and Butchart gardens together, because on one side there's rides, and on the other there's a playground, a theater and a bunch of nice gardens.
Some of the rides we went on Lise went on when she was a kid, so she could advise us a bit on which ones to try. There was a car driving one that she had done, and it was almost exactly the same. We all went on it, and I think that Tobin did it about four times.
We stayed at Tivoli for about 4 hours, and we were exhausted the next day.

Before that, we walked through the old harbor of Copenhagen, which was very interesting as well. The funny thing was that there were boats that you could take canal tours in, but the canal was only about 400m long anyway.

Trains, cool park boat

We found a bucket or two of brio train tracks, and I spent a morning building a ginormous train track, that went over one stair. When I was done the whole family played trains for a bit, except for Jeff who sat and watched us.
Then yesterday we went exploring in the nearby park, where apperently there's a place where you can ride horses and a nature center, but we just found a ship-like structure with neat rock spirals. Then afterwards we found four or so small paths that lead into the forest, but the were lined with stinging nettles, and most of us were wearing shorts and a t-shirt, so we stayed away.
Today we are going to explore the many bike paths there, and see if we can find the horse place.

P.S.
Tobin found a lion costume

Copenhagen

We are in Denmark. We're done with trains, and we are in a normal modern cool town house. We had to walk about a kilometer from the train station, in the burning sun, and next to a highway. But now we are here, and this place is amazing. Everything is compact: the fridge, freezer, washing machine and dish washer are all hidden in a cupboard or drawer. Also, there are little green spaces in the middle of the units, like courtyards. And you access your house by a long ramp that goes everywhere, and they have a scooter and it's really fun to go all the way down, then back up. Also you can go to the very top of it, and see a lot, which I think is more exiting for the Danish people because there are no hills or mountains anywhere. It's flat.
There are a lot of bicyclists because it's flat, and on almost all of the roads they have a raised path for the bikes, and sometimes bike stop lights.
Anyway, here are some of my pictures, but I think it's still worth looking at the website, but it uses flash so it doesn't work on iPods: http://www.8tallet.dk/8tal.html

P.S.
Our train here went on a ferry, and on the ferry were some huge nutella jars, and giant tubes of mentos in the store.