I love Oprah - but not that much....

On Sunday we disembarked the cruise ship and Bo headed on home early in the morning. Due to flight schedules the kids and I needed to spend the night in Denmark and catch a flight out the next morning. So we took the train in to Copenhagen and hung out in the hotel for a while. Then we took a walk and went to see Marshall's favorite museum of the trip: The Ripley's Believe it Or Not Museum..... no famous Hermitage museum for him. The Picasso's bored him to death. But show him a picture of how much weight a person can lift with a hook through their tongue - now that is worth putting in a museum! Oh the world through the eyes of an 8 year old boy!

After the museum we were pretty bored. You know how after two weeks of living out of a suitcase you are just ready to sleep in your own bed? That's where we were at. In fact, we were so bored that when an ambulance drove by and stopped about a block ahead we decided to follow it and see what happened - now that IS bored!

The ambulance guys just went in the building... boring. But across the street there were people gathering, including about 5 police officers and a bunch of people all dressed up looking like they were waiting for someone to arrive. We headed on over and got into the group along the entry to Tivoli Gardens which is an amusement park/ garden/ concert area in the city. I asked one of the police officers what was going on and she said the Danish royal family would be arriving soon for a summer concert - COOL!

So about 10 minutes later the Queen and her sister arrived along with the Prince Consort (Queens husband).... then the Crown Prince and his wife. Of course I had no camera with me at the time. But nevertheless it was quite a memory. The royal family walked past us about 8 feet away! Marie actually was right in the front, just 4 or 5 feet from them!

They were dressed beautifully and there was a line of guards with big fluffy hats - similar to the British Guards. Some of these guards were young boys of about 12 years old (like Boy Scouts maybe?)so Marshall thought that was so awesome.

I love Forrest Gump moments like that!

Next we ate dinner and then headed on back to the room to repack and get ready to prepare for our flight the next day. On the way I was excited to see a 7-11 and went in to see if they had any english magazines for the flight home. I immediately spotted an Oprah "O" magazine in english - I hadn't seen anything in English for a very long time. I know I mentioned it before and I don't mean to obsess, but did I tell you how crazy expensive it is in England? Denmark is twice as bad! Most of our trip we were fairly shielded from the extreme prices because we slept and ate on the cruise ship and we aren't huge souvenir buyers. The only thing we really saw the high prices in quite often was museum entry fees. A bottled water is usually about $5. so we were definitely refilling them and reusing them!

Anywhoooooo....
I took the magazine up to the counter and the clerk told me it was 82 Danish Kroners. Five Kroner is equal to one dollar. Therefore the magazine was over $16! I was shocked, but not too shocked to tell him that I no longer wanted the magazine - I love ya Oprah, but not that much!


I will post pictures soon. We arrived home in the middle of the night last night after 21 hours of travel (Copenhagen to London to Chicago to Texas). One of our suitcases never went through customs with us in London, so not sure when it will arrive. Of course it was the one that has my camera battery charger and UBS cable:)

Bon Voyage!

We are going on a long dreamed about family vacation!

I'll try to blog about our trip, which we leave for in 4 hrs. and 15 minutes. But if I never figure out the technology on other computers, you may not hear from me for a little while.

Today was spent packing. We are each limiting ourselves to one 25" suitcase and is has to weigh less than 40 pounds - not easy consider we will be gone quite a while, we could have pretty dramatic temperature changes as well as a need for formal, semi-formal and casual attire. It was a challenge, but we did it. Our saving grace? Space bags!

The Container Store sells travel and suitcase size space bags. You just put your stuff in them, ziplock them up and then roll all the extra air out and you end up with clothes that look like colorful freeze dried fish! Big fish!

It will be an adventure and with all that has been going on (see kitchen blog below), I haven't even really had time to get excited. But now with just a few hours until we leave the house to catch a 6 am flight, I am getting pumped! I'll try to keep a journal and then post when I get back if I am unable to post while away.

Off to bed now ...(but can anyone really sleep wondering if the alarm will go off on time?) Good thing I can sleep on planes, as my friend Liz can attest to (I once slept 8 hours straight on a trip with her! My parents got me noise-canceling headphones for my b-day. So it should really be no problem to tune out irritable spouses, cranky teenagers, needy little boys,etc. I don't actually think the headphones were invented to tune out your own family (I think it was some dumb thing like engine noise that was the original intent). But hey, what a great bonus benefit!