Trip to Billund

From April 9 to April 15 I had a holiday planned with my children. The original intention was to go back to LegoLand Germany: our seasonpasses were purchased last November, so we might as well use them throughout the entire year. Unfortunately the Easter holidays in Germany (beginning of the season) started one week later, so I had to find another destination. I decided to go once more to Denmark because LegoLand Germany informed me that I also have unlimited access to the park in Billund. Last time I went there was in 2007 for the 75th anniversary of Lego.

Downside of a trip to Billund: it's approx. 600 miles and an entire day in a car with no airco... but we arrived with hardly any problems worth mentioning: only one hour waiting time to get trough the Elbe-tunnel in Hamburg, and lots of roadworks on Germany's main highway with speedlimits of 40 mph (!). I only needed three sanitary stops and the children were not annoying: they had fun taking pictures of cars with funny license plates.
But at our arrival the key-adress (a local hotel) was closed. A friendly employee at the local supermarket told me the hotel went bankrupt about six months ago... He made a few calls and in the end it turned out that I could just go to the holiday house and search for the key under the doormat(!)...

Our first day in the park we had extremely good weather for this time of year: by noon I put all our coats back in the car, and once in a while we even walked around in our T-shirt! No wonder the kids had lots of fun on the wet attractions.

Our second day in the park we still had lovely weather, but this time we kept our coats on. It wasn't Easter holidays in Denmark yet (like in Germany), so it wasn't very crowded: three times in a row on the same attraction was no exception at all! The park closed at 6 p.m. but rides stopped at 5 p.m., so the last hour we went inside to play in the DUPLO-corner (yes: DUPLO). Unfortunately we had to leave the park before the kids could finish their creations...

When we entered the park, the kids ran immediately back to the DUPLO-corner: they wanted to check if our (unfinished) creations had survived. Unfortunately not, so they started building again.

• Left: their tower was so high that my oldest daughter had to sit on my shoulders to add the final part.

• Right: the famous letters were added; one on each side of the tower.

• Left: the youngest one built a (very simple) boat (at home she makes all the models from set 8094!).

• Right: while everybody was building in squares, I tried to build something more rounded - a lighthouse.

Total building time so far: approximately one hour. We tried a few attractions, but it was so extremely cold in comparison to the previous day that we spent the entire afternoon indoors... building with DUPLO-bricks.

• Left: with the building instructions of set 3723 in mind, I tried to build a similar maxifig with a rather limited number of different parts.

• Right: my youngest built a lot slower than me, but in the end she made a perfect copy... a female version.

• Left: we were not the only ones hiding indoors. There was a group of European students (from a foreign exchange student program) working on a marketing project that day. When they saw me building, they forgot all about their project and started building too. They had the same idea of my daughter: building a female version (but with more feminine accents...). Unfortunately one of them bumped into it just seconds after I took this picture.

• Right: what is it with me and mosaics?....

The park was closed so I told the kids to play around our holiday house and relax a bit before driving back to Belgium the next day. But in the afternoon they got so bored (what do you expect without LEGO?) and asked me to leave that evening. A few weeks before our vacation I decided not to drive at night for the very first time, but in the end they persuaded me to do it again...

After being on the road for more than 12 hours (I had to take a -long- nap halfway), we returned home before noon. Guess what: one hour later the playroom was filled with LEGO...