danmark, part one

we moved from iceland to denmark, as i assume you gathered from the last post of austin's gracious face. this was the main part of our trip, because denmark is where tommy served his mission and where lindsay and travis were moving. we were supposed to be there for two weeks, although our plans changed when lindsay and travis were delayed (more on that later!). dad and austin invited themselves because of my dad's recently discovered danish roots and interest in family history. (austin was just freeloading, along for the ride and the comic relief.)

it was so fun to see tommy in all these cities where he served--places i've heard stories about for years. he didn't have a digital camera on his mission, though, so i've never seen pictures from his mission. so this was a really cool experience for both of us! he had a great time using his danish and showing us all around. denmark was beautiful, both the cities and the country that we drove around scoping out churches for family history purposes.

and now, for a billion pictures (sorry, this might not be interesting to any of you, but i know my mom wants to see them, so there you go!):

we went to the denmark temple (austin did baptisms and the rest of us did a session). thanks to the random man taking a picture not getting the temple in the background, haha.

we did a boat tour through copenhagen.
nyhavn, one of the coolest-looking parts of copenhagen.
the little mermaid statue!

the most famous dane, hans christian anderson. we saw at least three statues of him in different parts of denmark. awesome. now we need to go read his stories.

tommy in front of the apartment he lived in as a missionary in odense! how cute, right?

at h.c. anderson's childhood home.
we went to church in odense, where tommy got to see some old friends and an old mission companion.

and we got to meet a distant relative of tommy's who found him through family history work while tommy was on his mission. he's not a member, but he loves family history, and he was so incredibly nice. his name is also hans kristian, but he doesn't write scary children's stories.

and the other perk about hans kristian is that he lives in the town with the best name in denmark: middelfart. yes, the farting jokes did abound.

one of the days of our trip we spent the whole time driving around trying to track down the churches where my ancestors were christened hundreds of years ago. it was awesome and long. i'll spare you the pictures of every church we went to, but here's one, just so you know.

we also went to a VIKING ship museum where they found five original viking ships in the ocean floor. and we got to dress up as vikings. huzzah!

this was just a funny picture. we had to do laundry so we stopped at a random laundromat we drove by and pulled their chairs outside and sat on the sidewalk because it was too hot inside the laundromat. kind of like a band picture, yeah?

every mormon who visits denmark needs to make this trip to visit the original christus statue at a church in copenhagen. it was totally empty and really beautiful.

the other natural mormon danish pilgrimage to the castle where the original versions of carl bloch's paintings are held. all the paintings were in a tiny little room right off the chapel (in the castle) and all the other tourists just walked right through, but we stayed there for a good 10-15 minutes looking and taking pictures.

(look at us, matchy matchy. it was an accident. and look in the picture above--dad and austin were matchy matchy that day too. we looked hilarious, i'm sure.)

and then, of course, we went to hamlet's castle an hour or so north of copenhagen. did you forget that hamlet was set in denmark? shame on you. "there's something rotten in the state of denmark"--remember? coolly enough, shakespeare even gives the actual name of the city the castle is in (helsingor in danish, elsinore in english), so that's how we know it's the actual castle he was talking about. sadly, the castle is actually really... boring. i wish they would have had a totally hamlet-themed tour, but they didn't really have anything. you just walked through and looked at these near-empty rooms. but it was still cool.

the castle was right on the farthest northern tip of zealand, the island that copenhagen is on. and you could see sweden from it! if we'd had more time in the day, we would've taken a ferry over just to say we'd been to sweden, but we didn't so we didn't. but look--hey sweden!

me and my buddy bill shakespeare. he's a big fan of mine.
the last night we were there, we went to tivoli, the old/famous amusement park right in downtown copenhagen, and walked around. we also paid hundreds of kronur to ride some rides that we could have ridden for much cheaper at any state fair here in america. but it seemed appropriate, you know?

okay, phew. hooray for denmark!

the many faces of austin

dad and austin joined us for the denmark leg of our trip. it was really fun because it saved tommy and i from getting too sick of each other (ugh) (just kidding, tommy) and they were great company. i just kept seeing these funny pictures of austin as i was going through our photos and wanted to share them with the world. some of them will show what good company they were, and some of them will just show how much austin loves the digital camera. byu isn't even going to know what hit them when he gets there.

this one (below) makes me just crack up every time. the camera is zoomed in all the way and... it's just hilarious.

and the best part of the trip is probably how dad and austin matched twice on the trip. accidentally. they both happened to bring their duke shirts and wear them twice, on the same day each time. how awesome.

this is matching day 2: (matching day 1 is up at the top.)

iceland: cold, wet, and amazing

well, we're still on our trip and not getting home for another five days, but we had some down time in our hotel tonight so i thought i would share some pictures with all you oh so curious readers out there.

the first four days of our trip were in iceland. we checked the weather beforehand and it was supposed to be about 55 degrees the whole time we were there, so we were THIS CLOSE to not bringing any type of rain gear, jeans, or sweatshirts. luckily we did, because it rained/blew/froze on us the whole time we were there. and that was apparently the normal summery weather they have there. we laughed the whole time about how dumb we almost were to almost not bring warm clothes, because we then would have had to spend hundreds of dollars on icelandic sweaters to save us from hypothermia. (and although i did really want an icelandic sweater, i think i'll save that as a souvenir for next time we go there. they were REALLY expensive.)

however, it was SO COOL (in more ways than one, hahaha) to go to iceland and see the land of my ancestors. and i learned some really cool things about it while i was there. mostly i was impressed by the fact that they survived in a place like that. everywhere you drive outside of reykjavik, there are huge swaths of land just covered by volcanic rock, and you can just see where the lava flows were hundreds of years ago. and did you know that even just seventy years ago, iceland was still listed as a third-world country? it's only in the last generation that iceland has actually industrialized/caught up to the rest of us. but don't worry, they're about to shoot past us with their geothermal energy and clean water sources. (we saw a geothermal power plant--coolest thing ever.) their water that they use comes STRAIGHT out of the ground! as in, it doesn't even need to be heated or pressurized. they just bring it up from the hot spots and pipe it right into people's houses, already heated and already clean. it is amazing!

needless to say, ICELAND IS THE BOMB.

and now for a billion pictures:

the first morning we got there (after paying billions of icelandic kronur for two unnecessary taxi rides; we felt so foolish) we went to the blue lagoon, a natural hot spring that has been commercialized and turned into a spa. you pretty much have to go there if you're going to reykjavik though, so we did.

remember how i boasted that we were going to do in-water massages at the blue lagoon? well, turns out you shouldn't boast, because then you'll do something stupid like reserve the massage for the wrong month (like august 26 instead of july 26) and then you won't be able to do it. but we still had a good time at the blue lagoon anyways.

tommy so excited as we walked into the blue lagoon. (he was excited about the in-water massages that never happened. so sad.) look at those volcanic rocks behind him.
they had this mud stuff that comes up naturally from the floor of the lagoon and helps your skin. they let you use it for free at the lagoon and then charge 60 dollars for you to buy some at the end. we just brought an empty container and filled it up at the lagoon for future use. (someone said to on a website we read beforehand!)

this is in front of this nice lake in reykjavik. no caption needed.

in front of the reykjavik bay, right outside of the hostel we were staying at. (first time at a hostel!) we went on a nice walk around it. notice my iceland mittens i'm wearing because it was SO DANG COLD.

icelandic ponies kind of resembled 80s punk rockers.

in front of gullfoss, the biggest waterfall in iceland.

this was at geysir (pronounced gay-seer, as opposed to the american "geysir" or apparently british "geezer" as our tour guide kept pronouncing it). it was pretty much a mini-yellowstone with a geezer and some hot pots and whatnot.

tommy at thingvellir national park, where the first parliament in the world was held. once again, go iceland!

and now, for some icelandic scenery from our day where we rented a car and drove a bit up north to snaefellsnes peninsula to snaefellsnesjokull national park (just try pronouncing THAT why don't you?).

i wanted to catch those sheep (just in a picture!). they were wimps. they ran away everytime i got anywhere near them.

we went on a hike and ended up near this tiny little hut serving fish soup. we wanted to eat the soup. the soup cost more than the car rental. (not. but almost.) but we ate it anyways.

icelanders love leiningers!

THIS is the closest we got to the little island OFF iceland where my ancestors were from. flatey is just in the middle of this bay here, but you can't see it because it's like 100 kms away. there's actually a ferry that will take you to flatey, but we didn't know about it before we scheduled everything and it only goes out and comes back about once a day, so we missed it. but we wanted to drive over and say hi to my ancestors since we were already in the area.

the last thing we did that day of driving around was go to an icelandic shark farm (the home of the people who catch the shark, not that they grow them there) and partake of the icelandic delicacy of harkarl, the aged, rotted shark meat that they've been eating for centuries (or something). when the shark meat is fresh, it's poisonous, so some genius thought of burying the meat for four months and then hanging it up and letting it dry for eight more and then it's edible! who'da thunk? i'd heard many times about this stuff, and had really hoped to get a chance to try it. and we found a place last minute out near flatey and did it.

this is what i thought:

this is what tommy thought:

pretty much icelandic food is all kind of gross, or at least it's just not the type of food you'd regularly choose to eat if you had an option (rotted shark meat, boiled lamb's head, horse, puffin, whale... all those foods you eat when you're a starving nation with nothing else to live off of for centuries). but it was a novelty we had to try.

anyways, that was a massive post. i'll give you a few days to digest until i post about part 2 of our trip.