The Wild Newlywed Yonder: Americans in Aarhus

Happy New Year to everyone! Sam and I ended 2012 with our first major trip since moving to England. We were both a little nervous to take our first trip to a country that didn't speak English. We left for Denmark on December 28th at about 4:00 am. We had to drive to Stansted Airport, which is a 45 minute drive from our house and located just outside of London. We were told this was the smallest airport in London, which may be true but the security took forever. We took a flight on Ryanair, which is the cheapest airline ever, in case you are ever in Europe and want to take a side trip, then take Ryanair. However, checking a bag costs more than the plane ticket so we packed light. The flight was annoying, since the airline is so cheap they keep trying to sell you crap the whole time, which all we wanted to do was sleep, but at least it got us into Aarhus on time. It was 10:00am Aarhus time when we landed. We found a bus and after a short 45 minute ride we were in the town center of Aarhus, Denmark, the second largest city in Denmark. We decided to walk around a bit and then grab some lunch, so we went into what looked like a sandwich shop and ordered kabobs. Which I learned is not a stick filled with shrimp but rather a big slab of meat where part is shaved off and put into a tortilla. It was delicious but expensive.

The slab of meat our kabobs were shaved from

The kabob, two of them plus two small cokes cost us $20...yikes

After lunch we headed to our hotel to see if we could drop off our luggage, since check in wasn't for another couple of hours. We walked in and my husband starts rattling off in Danish to the front desk person. My mouth dropped open in shock, turns out while I was packing the night before he was online learning helpful Danish phrases, such as do you speak English? After we dropped our bags off we headed to the Art Museum next door, which was supposedly the number one sight to see in Aarhus. Unfortunately, some of the Danish modern art looked like something our 2 year old niece Hazel did. This art museum is know for their rainbow panoramic room which gives you a panoramic view of the city in different colors, which was pretty cool. Once we were done looking at art we still had an hour to kill, so we hung out in the cafe. We checked into our hotel at 3:00 pm and ended up taking a nap until 5, we were pretty tired. We headed out for dinner and discovered that just because the American dollar was worth more than the Danish Krone it doesn't mean everything is cheaper. Our dinner ended up costing us $60 and we ordered the cheapest things on the menu...ouch!

Pink View of Aarhus

Yellow view of Aarhus

Panoramic view

Orange and yellow view

Aarhus

Rainbow room

City of Aarhus

No idea who this angel is or the importance since the entire sign was in Danish, but we took a picture anyway

Pretty sure that says "The Street" which is a real name people like to use as a street name in these parts of the world

A church in Aarhus that was having a funeral as we walked by....they rang the bell for every year of that mans life. (Okay I totally made that up, but they rang the bells a lot and many people were standing by the hearse crying).

Our second day in Aarhus was spent in Old Town. We bought tourist cards called "The Aarhus Card" and we were able to use the buses for free and get into museums at a discounted rate. The Old Town was one of those discounted places. It was super neat, they had moved houses from all over Aarhus and Copenhagen to this one place and kept their original structures. It was way cooler than Silver Dollar City. There were people walking around like they would've back in the 1800's and a horse and buggy you could ride. We didn't expect to spend all of our day there but we were enjoying it so much and it was a nice day when we went, bonus. I think in the summer it is even more active with more events going on, but the town was short staffed since it was between Christmas and New Years. We still enjoyed traveling back in time though. Around 3:00 in the afternoon we decided to head to the Science museum so we hopped on the bus that my google maps told us to get on to and after about twenty minutes we realized it wasn't taking us anywhere near the museum. So we got off at the nearest stop we recognized and had a hot drink instead. It is really hard to navigate bus stops when you don't speak Danish and their "stops" were just street intersections where all the names sounded the same. As part of our Aarhus Card we were suppose to get a free game of bowling, so we decided to do that since we always have a hard time finding stuff to do after dinner on our vacations. We tried to claim our free game but the lady had no idea what we were talking about and it would've cost us $20 to play one game. No thank you- Danish bowling is not much cooler than American bowling and it is not worth that amount of cash, so we left.

Old Town

An apprentice, we got to follow his story

A cigar making shop

Sam wants this caption to say, "Sam's face after Amanda used the toilet" he has been planning that caption since I took the photograph...but anyone who has spent time with the Holbrook's should know who the real stinky one is and I will give you a hint....its not me!

The horse and buggy in Old Town

Old Town

One of the "workers" pushing his cart

Old Town

Horse and buggy ride

The Mayor of Old Town's house

Wind Mill

Old Town

Yum...ducks...good thing Sam didn't have to do this part for our Christmas dinner

Old Car

Bridge in Old Town

Walking in Old Town

Old Town

Can't really read this sign but basically on Christmas Eve at the Board School the children brought the teacher small gifts and the Christmas Story (the Biblical one) was read by the teacher and Christmas Day was explained to them before school was let out early....man if only America would've stuck to the founding fathers beliefs and keep God in the schools...even in the public schools of England the Christmas Story with Mary and Joseph is acted out by the kids today.

The school at Old Town

Old Town

On our last day in Aarhus, Sunday, we started the day at Church....where no one spoke English. Then we headed to the science museum, determined not to get lost. We got there only to discover that it was closed until January 2nd. Nuts! I really had to pee too because we got on the bus at the wrong time and had to ride through the entire route twice which took about an hour. Luckily, we found a museum of natural history that was open and we got in for free with our cards. The museum was neat, as usual Sam enjoyed it more than me. It was like walking into a big taxidermy building since they had large, life sized stuffed animals, but everything was in Danish so I am not sure I learned anything. After the museum we got on the bus looking for the viking museum, I mean you cannot visit Denmark without seeing the vikings. Unfortunately, it was closed on weekends, but we found a beach that we explored instead. It was the Bay of Aarhus which is basically where the North Sea and the Baltic Sea meet, so Sam and I have both touched the North Sea, the Baltic Sea, and the English Channel now...and they are all cold. After walking around the beach we took the two mile walk back into town and stopped at a local coffee shop because we were frozen. Turns out ordering coffee in English is easy, but listening for your order in Danish is difficult. It turned out to be a long day of walking but it was super fun.

Danish Deer

They come right up to you

Deer

This deer was looking at me, but then it got distracted

The coast line is behind Sam, it took us a while to get there

Touching the Baltic and North Sea at the Bay of Aarhus

Bay of Aarhus

Pretty

It had sand

A Danish Seagull...I am obsessed with seagulls

Random water fall

Gorgeous

Water fall

We thought we discovered a palace along the bay, turns out it is just a bed and breakfast

The City of Aarhus

The Bay

Danish Harry

We loved it!

We did pretty good for our first trip! No major problems and we both arrived back safe and sound. We never even got lost and most people spoke English. We did learn a valuable lesson though and that is that even though getting to places can be cheap the city itself can be expensive. Even the things we bought at the grocery store, like chips, were 100 Krone's which is like $17 and a coca-cola at a restaurant was 30 Krone which is about $6...ridiculous. However, we learned that Aarhus is the happiest city in the world and apparently people there are very wealthy, which you would have to be if you were going to spend that much on a bag of chips. If you're ever traveling to Europe and looking for a short trip we would definitely recommend Denmark, but it would probably be better to visit in the summer, not in between holidays and not on a weekend!