A Summer House on Fyn

When I first found out I got the job at our Danish ALK site, I was sent a copy of the employee handbook. I got to the page about employee benefits and just saw a bullet point that translated to "Summer house."

I was intrigued, and I asked about it as soon as I started my job here, and I was not disappointed.

Every year, we get an email with an opportunity to throw our names in a raffle to win one of four summer houses for a week. There are two in Denmark, one in Croatia, and one in Italy. You can put your name in for 8 different combinations of house and week.

Zac and I figure out which weeks the kids were out of school and when we would be available to take vacation days, and then signed up for all the possible combinations of those weeks at the two Danish summer houses. We had already decided that our summer would be spent road-tripping around to different places in Denmark with the kids, so this fit into our plans pretty nicely.

And BONUS! We both work there, so we had twice as many chances to win. Which we did.

I got House #2 the first week of July, and Zac got House #1 the third week of July! Talk about lucky. I should clarify that when I say that we "won" them, it is not without cost. We pay approximately $450 plus utilities and taxes, but seriously, that's nothing when you compare it to an Airbnb on the lake during the summer in the U.S. or something...I mean, those would be $1000 per day, and we get these places from Saturday afternoon to Saturday morning the next week. It's a pretty darn good deal.

Anyway, shortly after we started planning, Zac found out he had read the schedule wrong and was not, in fact, available the first week of July. If we threw the house back into the pool, we would've lost the deposit that was automatically withdrawn from my paycheck anyway, so I told him I was thinking about just taking the kids anyway and inviting Amanda to fly over and join. He was, of course, totally fine with that, so Amanda booked a flight and I started sketching out our trip.

There are five major regions of Denmark: Hovedstaten/The Capital Region (where we live), Sjælland/Zealand (where we visited Jacob and Christina's summer house), Nordjylland/The North Jutland Region, Midtjylland/The Central Jutland Region, and Syddanmark/the Southern Region.

Our first summer house was located in the Region of Southern Denmark, which includes Fyn/Funen (the big green island in the middle of the map above). To get there, we had to drive across the bridge that spans The Great Belt (from Zealand to Fyn) and then up past Odense (the third largest city in Denmark) and out through the Danish countryside. It was a lovely drive.

Amanda brought Harrison some fancy anti-car-sickness glasses we ordered off Amazon, and my sweet colleague, Caroline, gave us a booster seat, so thankfully, Harrison did fine on the trip.

Vibe helped us prepare for how the toll bridge would work and we navigated it like pros. We passed huge fields, roadside wildflowers, big forests, and an adorable lighthouse. We rocked out to Danish summer hits and had a really nice road trip.

Danish summer houses are not like an Airbnb or a hotel suite. You are lucky if they come with bed linens and towels, and you are supposed to bring a "moving-in box" of paper towels, soap, toilet paper, laundry detergent, dishwashing pods, etc. with you because these are not traditionally supplied. Of course I didn't know any of this.

I had confirmed there would be a set of bed linens for each of us, bath towels, and hand towels, so that was good news. There was a roll-and-a-half of toilet paper in each of the bathrooms, and about three paper towels on the roll. We followed the directions to ensure the power and water were turned on and read the electricity and water meters upon arrival. We made our beds, got started on a puzzle of Odense, and did some grocery shopping for the week.

I had lots of plans for the trip, and almost all of them were best with warm, sunny weather. Amanda and I stared intently at our phones Saturday evening trying to figure out which days would, in fact, be the least rainy. Darn it.

The kids played with the outdoor games that were shoved in the sauna and ran down to check out the playground and the football pitch in our little oceanside community.

Kaden must've done some kind of weird parkour stuff when he was out and about, because he came back to the house barely able to move and said he was just standing there when suddenly, his back started hurting. He was actually in pretty excruciating pain, so I evaluated him for signs of shingles, fever, appendicitis, and everything else I could think of to no avail. We settled on a tweaked back, gave him some Advil, and put some ice packs on the area while he played on his phone and tried to ignore the crippling pain.

I made the kids banana splits, a treat they've never been privileged to have on account of Zac's weird banana condition, so they were pretty excited. (Even Kaden, who we literally had to carry to the table.)

* * *

On Sunday, we had a leisurely day around the house. We read books, played games, worked on the puzzle, and ate a ton of candy Zac had bought us for the week. When we confirmed Kaden could walk a little better, we took a group trip down to the oceanside near the summer house in our rain jackets and had fun searching for things in the water, picking up fun shells, and looking at interesting rocks.

The kids thought they found a bunch of obsidian (Zac later informed them it was chert), and they were having a really good time finding the biggest and best chunks. They broke some open and found a geode, and then started planning all the ways they could forge it into weapons. It was actually quite sharp, like shards of glass, when it smashed open, and the boys found that out the hard way.

I dabbed their wounds with an old used tissue I found in my jacket pocket and we headed back to the house to properly clean them up, rock collection in tow.

The rest of the evening was pretty mild: beer and Hot Tamales (thanks, Amanda!) and puzzling. It doesn't get any better!

* * *

Because of the ever-changing weather, we figured the nicest day (i.e. warmest with the most sun and least rain) was going to be Monday. We had planned an exciting hike around Æbelø for Friday, but since the hike required us to walk through the ocean for 1.5 km on the way there and again on the way back, we moved the hike to Monday.

The thing about the hike to Æbelø is that you can do it any time, regardless of the tide, but at low tide, the water is at your ankles, and at high tide, the water is at your hips. We were aiming for low tide so Harrison wouldn't struggle, but moving the hike from Friday to Monday came with tide-table-related consequences.

Instead of an easy 1.5 km through ankle-deep water (like we would've had Friday), we ended up wading into the frigid sea about an hour after high tide. At least the sun was shining.

It was cold as we waded in. Like, you felt the ice creep into your leg bones and it hurt all the way through. Also, Harrison absolutely could not walk in water that deep and tried very hard to not burst into tears, so I quickly put him up onto my shoulders and silently hoped I could carry a 7-year-old across an ocean in water up to my thighs.

Moms can do anything they will themselves to do for their kids.

By the time we were submerged up to our hips, the pain from the cold water had subsided and we were acclimated. I traded Harrison between my back and my shoulders a few times, but my sandals were suctioning themselves to the sea floor and rubbing blisters into the soft parts of my foot every time I pulled them free. Amanda suggested I walk on my tip-toes, which helped a lot, but I still had about a kilometer to go, and carrying the boy through the water while walking on my tip-toes (and avoiding jellyfish) was no small task.

Jellyfish EVERYWHERE. Do they sting? Who knows. We didn't want to do science.

About that time, I looked around and realized no one was carrying the soft-sided cooler with all of our lunches and water bottles in it. We took a quick inventory of our water and dry snacks. Amanda had two bags of cashews and about 8 dried mango slices in her backpack, and between us, we had four small water bottles clipped to our bags (plus Amanda's insulated bottle of hot water), so we decided to press on and be hungry.

It was a rough start, but the weather was beautiful and we were almost the only people daring to take the journey that day.

We followed the guide poles across the water until we reached Æbelholm, a tiny "rest" island connected to the main island by a narrow isthmus.

See that land across the water?! That's where we walked from!

I read that the isthmus is sometimes under water, but we were lucky and it was not. Instead, we walked on land over rocky shores and deep sand for another 2 kilometers. We saw a dead seal, a potentially injured seal, beautiful rocks, more great wildflowers, some riled-up sea birds, and just the most beautiful surroundings.

When we finally made it to the end of the isthmus, Æbelø stood before us. We changed out of our swimwear and sandals into warmer clothes and better walking shoes, rationed ourselves some water, and started off on the trail.

Æbelø is an uninhabited nature reserve. There are no facilities or businesses or toilets or anything, just a managed wilderness that used to be a small farm. The old farmhouse is still there, but they have allowed plants and animals to reclaim the rest of the island. They are trying to restore the native flora and fauna, and since it was bird mating season, we were not allowed to go off-trail through the center. That was OK with us though, because we wanted to make the entire loop!

The initial part of the trail was through a grassy forested area. It was quiet and soft and smelled amazing. There were some really neat trees and all you could hear was Harrison chattering excitedly and the birds chirping in the treetops.

We rounded the first turn and found ourselves at the top of a cliff overlooking the ocean. The hillside is made up mostly of clay and it drops out from under your feet easily, so we used caution.

The trail continued on through more forest and tall grasses. There were some excellent beetles, and the kids found some tiny toads!

The forest started giving way to ferns and we spied a cattail pond with some ducks in the distance.

As we started approaching the tip of the island, the ferns grew up taller than Kaden on both sides of us! It was a really cool fern forest. I've never seen anything like it.

There is an option to leave the main trail and take a dead-end trail up to Æbelø Fyr, the (still functioning but automated) lighthouse, so of course, we were on the lookout for the turn-off. When we got through the fern forest, the island opened up and we saw incredible trees, seaside cliffs, and of course, the lighthouse ahead.

We were kind of bummed we couldn't respectfully get any closer to the lighthouse, but it was still really neat to see. We stopped and ate the mangos, drank some more of our water, and shared a bag of cashews before heading around the other side of the island.

The walk was so pretty, the kids were so well-behaved, and Harrison, the little trooper, walked the whole thing (once we got out of the ocean).

When we were almost all the way around and back at the isthmus, Khloe and Amanda stopped us suddenly. We were very surprised to see two little lambs on the island! (I looked it up later, and there are definitely Corsican mountain sheep that live on the island...even though there are no mountains...)

The walk back was much easier since we had just missed low tide and Harrison could walk the ocean by himself. The kids discovered that they could run, so they kept running up to the next guide pole and waiting for us to catch up, and Harrison just rolled around on the ocean floor playing games the whole way.

Fifteen kilometers of hiking behind us, we were back at the car. We all shoved sandwiches in our faces and drank a ton of water. We were all happy to sit down and it started raining on us just as we loaded ourselves into the car. We went back to the summer house, took hot showers, started some laundry, and collapsed for a bit. We were still hungry, so we drove into Bogense to get hamburgers and milkshakes at a little harbor restaurant, and it was a nice end to an incredible day.

* * *

You would think we would've wanted a day of rest after such a long day Monday, and we did want that, but Tuesday was going to be the second-nicest day, and we were planning a trip to LEGOLAND in Billund, Denmark. We had to take advantage of the nice(r) weather and just go.

It was an hour drive, but we pre-purchased parking and tickets and planned to arrive just as it opened. It poured rain on us during the drive, but when we got out of the car, it had all but stopped and we were pretty proud of ourselves.

Kaden and Khloe wanted to go hit all the thrill rides before the lines got long, so they ran off on their own and Amanda and Harrison and I went off in search of our first ride. We learned Amanda had never actually been to an amusement park before and had only been on rollercoasters and other little rides at the fair as a child.

We went into the Ninjago area first and saw a ride where you have to use your ninja skills to fight digital creatures as a team while the little cart drives you around. We put on our 3D glasses and did our best, but we were bad at it. At least it was a mellow ride to start out on, there was no line, and it was pretty fun.

Harrison climbed around the Ninjago land for a bit and tried a reaction-time game out in the courtyard.

We picked the Flying Eagle rollercoaster next because it seemed short and smooth.

It was actually a pretty fun little rollercoaster, and it was even better since we only had to wait in line about 10 minutes.

One cool thing about LEGOLAND is that it's totally made with small, impatient children in mind. There are tons of things for them to do when they are walking between rides or waiting in line for a ride. They have these little Duplo stations in the lines, so your kid can enter on one side and then as you wind around through the gates, they can meet up with you when you've advanced further in the line.

It was sprinkling on us a bit, so we found a coffee place to get warm drinks. Harrison got a hot chocolate, and unlike the U.S., where kids' drinks are made with lukewarm water to avoid burns and lawsuits, Denmark makes hot chocolate hot. Harrison spilled it on his shirt, burned his chest and thigh, and cried a lot. We cleaned him up and got him on a carousel and he was OK again.

Rides aside, it's pretty fun to just walk around LEGOLAND because there are all kinds of little things made of LEGO that you can find.

Yes, he has LEGO buttcheeks.

We found a few more rides that were suitable for a child and two non-adventurous adults and had a pretty good time. We met up with Kaden and Khloe for lunch, and then continued on as a group. After massive ice creams, of course.

We tried our ninja skills again, and I think I'm the only one who didn't improve. We rode a couple more rollercoasters, a ride where you program your own wild experience, and some more chill rides that Harrison was OK with. Near the end of the day, we finally made it to the LEGO Movie area, and it was by far the best decorated. We were disappointed that they weren't just playing "Everything Is Awesome" on a loop, but it was still cute.

It did continue to rain on us off and on, but never for very long, and the whole day was fun. When the rides closed, we went to the miniatures land where famous cities and buildings are made from LEGO.

The LEGO House in Billund

Nyhavn in Copenhagen

We bought Harrison a little LEGO set and then hopped in the car to make our reservation at the LEGO Mini Chef restaurant down the road! Bye, LEGOLAND!

The LEGO Mini Chef restaurant is in the LEGO House, and I wouldn't have known about it except that a few months ago, my friend, Meghan, sent me a reel on Instagram of it asking me if it was really a thing.

It's a thing, Meg!!

Essentially, you use the little LEGO brick kit at your table (everyone gets their own) to code the menu items you want on a little tray. There are four categories of food and you choose one food from each category and place the corresponding bricks (in any conformation) on the little tray. You slide it into a computer and it reads your order. Your configuration even appears on the digital screen at your table, and they show little LEGO minifigure chefs preparing your order in their mini kitchen.

When your order is ready, it's packaged in a big 2-tiered LEGO box and a message appears on your screen. You can watch your order come down a spiral chute to the LEGO robot helpers (Robert and Roberta). The robots push your food down the conveyor belt and you collect it at the bottom. It's super fun.

We didn't buy tickets to go to the LEGO House because we went to LEGOLAND all day and then to dinner, but the colored rooftops of the LEGO House were still open, and you could access them for free from outside, so we let the kids run around and be silly before the 1-hour drive back to the summer house.

This is his "zesty pose"

He jumped up the whole thing!

Amanda got eaten by a shark.

* * *

Wednesday was supposed to be pretty lovely in the first half of the day and then get nasty, so we thought it might be a good day to drive about 30 minutes into Odense and see if we could pick out any of the buildings from the puzzle we finished!

I had found mention of a river cruise in Odense that takes you up to a forest where you can get off, explore, and then rejoin the boat later. I mistakenly thought it was a guided tour of the city, kind of like the canal tour in Copenhagen, so I thought it would be a good way to see some of the features of Odense and learn something about the town. We parked, bought our tickets, and since we had some time to kill, ordered lunch from a cute little place next to the river.

We had sandwiches and Cokes and then boarded the boat. Our captain was an older man with long, wavy, gray hair, a faded read crewneck sweater, a captain's hat, pants with a hole in the butt, and some shoes that might've been house slippers. The seats were oriented like benches facing the interior of the boat rather than facing forward, which we found strange, and he definitely did not narrate the boat ride. We also did not go through the city, we went along the banks, through the zoo, and to a quiet dock in the forest.

So clearly, I was wrong about what we'd get out of the tour, but we got off the boat for an hour and goofed around in the forest. It wasn't as magnificent as I had imagined, but we saw a mouse and some butterflies and played around in a little creek, so it was OK.

We took the boat back to Odense and decided to walk through the big park to look at statues and find some ice cream. I haven't mentioned yet, but Odense is where Hans Christian Andersen is from. He wrote, among other things, The Little Mermaid, which is why there is a very famous Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen. Since H.C. Andersen is from Odense, there are some statues in his honor around the town. We found one that is a different take on The Little Mermaid - you can see her transformation and the difference in perspective between her body, which is in the water, to her head, which is out of the water. It was unique and we liked it.

We found a really cute ice cream bicycle cart and got a couple of scoops, then walked toward H.C. Andersen's childhood home.

We found the house and took a picture of Harrison in front of it. Harrison learned about some of H.C. Andersen's other fairy tales in school and was excited to learn we could see his old house.

Our parking time was about to run out and I had already extended it a few times (remind me to tell you about the super cool parking system in Denmark sometime), plus Kaden had asked about 15 times when we were going to leave...I guess sightseeing in a different Danish city wasn't his favorite thing to do.

Amanda and I were happy to go back and see how fast we could do a 1000-piece LEGO minifigures puzzle. The answer is 2 hours and 23 minutes, which is not fast enough to win at any of the jigsaw puzzling championships, so we have some work to do. To be fair, it was a super respectable time and we also took bathroom breaks, snacked, texted, and took BeReals and stuff while we puzzled, so I guess we weren't trying too seriously.

* * *

I guess that brings us to the 4th of July, which, as you might guess, is not a thing in Denmark because Denmark has nothing to do with American Independence Day. We did almost nothing. The weather was terrible and we sat around the house reading books and staring at screens. It was still really relaxing. For dinner, we drove into town and ate at a little pizza place. The pizza was pretty good, and afterward, we decided we needed to re-up a couple of grocery items. I had this bright idea to walk down to the beach and find a nice sandy swim spot in case weather was better the next day.

We got to the beach, the wind picked up, and then the rain came. HARD. Like some of the most painful rain I've ever been in. So we got drenched, took a pretty walk back to the grocery store in the rain, grabbed our groceries, and walked back to the car to head home. Big day, huh?

* * *

On Friday, we decided the weather wasn't that bad and that we should go back to the beach we scouted. We packed a small lunch in the cooler, grabbed the beach bag, threw in a book, and we were off. We found the beach but it was really windy. We debated about whether to stay or not, but it looked like we would have a few rain-free hours, so we settled in.

We had it to ourselves.

Kaden made a chair in the sand and probably wished he hadn't come on the trip with us.

Khloe sunbathed and played on her phone.

Once Amanda pinned his hair out of his eyes, Harrison had a great time playing in the sand, building all kinds of things and totally ignoring the wind.

I read a book and Amanda took a frigid swim. We were absolutely living for the moments of sun in between the cloudy times. It was so warm and then so cold and then so warm and then so cold. When we saw a pretty dark cloud rolling in, we assumed it would pass us, but also that we wouldn't see sun again for hours, so we started packing up. The cloud did start pouring on us, so we went home all wet once again. Oh well. At least we did it!

That evening, the clouds disappeared and it was actually quite a pretty sunset. Khloe and I walked down to the oceanside overlook and just stared for so long.

Denmark is such a beautiful country. We do miss the mountains, the pines, and the other evergreens of northern Idaho, but this country is pretty in a different way, and I am always so moved by the pleasant, pastoral scenery and the lush vegetation.

* * *

Our trip to the summer house was really great. We didn't have the best weather, but we had some unique and exciting experiences that we'll never forget! The kids were so well-behaved and they got along with each other incredibly well. Amanda and I had fun spending time together and marveling at the Danish countryside, and now we are home safe and sound...and ready for another summer house next week!!