The Second Happiest Place on Earth – Day 7 “Take 2… and Action!”

Saturday: Walked 4.4 miles

Today started with a nice breakfast before heading back to the LEGO House for one more circuit and to get the virtual geocache on the roof. We discovered a few of our Fan Tour colleagues were also staying at the Refborg Hotel – this was an awesome place walking distance, I mean about a block, away from LEGO House. We started by grabbing a locker (free to guests- activated using your wristband) and then went back to the shop. I believe I mentioned this before, but LEGO Store with Minifig factories have exclusive designs making it a go to place for people who want exclusive minifigs. I bought the last exclusive set available from LEGO house and five minifigs, then sat at the computer before the crowd got too big designing special torsos for each. I did give Sue the chance to work on a couple. As those were printing we looked for heads, legs, hair and accessories. After putting our purchases in our locker we headed back to get our six-brick combination and code. There are over 900 million ways you can put six bricks together. Using your wristband you are randomly given one of those combinations. You then can pick up six 2×4 bricks from the “smallest LEGO brick factory” in the world. Go home and build your combination.

Sue and I saw they had a building activity just outside and decided to see if we could join in… timed entrance given out in the shop. We decided we had other things to do so back into the house!

The “Mood Mixer” had you build a character and choose it’s mood (Educators this is “SEL” Conservatives this is not “CRT”). Since we were happy We both choose to do a “Happy Dance”.

After these activities and as the crowd of people grew, we recalled our goal for the day- to log the virtual geocache on the roof of the LEGO house. You see, LEGO house designers decided that the “physical” aspect of play would be on the roof, so there are playgrounds accessible from the various colored areas. Also, when the house is open there are play areas accessible without a ticket from the outside of the house. These areas lead you to the roof. The roof is a scale 2×4 brick over the Master Gallery. The dinosaurs are under the brick’s tubes and the studs (knobs) on the top are actually skylights. The challenge- take your picture standing on the glass. Being a bit acrophobic this is a challenge, but I did it with Cecil. Oh, the things I do for that monkey.

We then picked up our stuff dropped it off at the hotel and returned to Jelling to see the Viking museum. For a small free museum, it was amazing. They took you through the history of Jelling, the birthplace of Denmark. We had visited the sites outside earlier the week, the museum tied it all together and the accompanying adventure lab helped too. They also had a great exhibit highlighting “Bluetooth” and King Harald. For me, they even had a comic book! I was glad we had the opportunity to come back when the museum was open.

We returned to Billund, stopped off again at the LEGOland hotel to see what exclusive sets they had and The LEGO Group HQ for a photo op then decided to chase down petrol for our rental car… we’ve been off whimventuring (yes, I just invented a word- aren’t you proud of me?) for a week and had used up almost a full tank of gas. Don’t know what was going on but none of my credit cards were considered “valid” by the unmanned kiosk at the gas station. I even called one of the companies and got a “Not our problem” response, frustrated we returned to the hotel to deal with one more frustration before dinner- how are we going to get all this stuff home?!?

This had been in the back of my mind since before we left and I thought I had it all figured out… yes, I make myself laugh too. I had packed my normal suitcase inside a larger suitcase which is brilliant until you realize the larger suitcase, isn’t that much larger. We thought about options and even went out to buy a duffel bag to put clothes into. Why is Denmark the second happiest place on earth (according to Pub trivia)? Because culturally they close thing down early. Weekends are not a time to go shopping until dawn. Stores close early so most people get time off to do stuff with family & friends. Remember when we arrived on Sunday the reception had closed right after lunch. We arrived jet lagged, exhausted to an envelop with a key left on a low shelf. People matter, you don’t need to be at work 24/7 because you aren’t expected to be open, or available 24/7. If only America would… funny thing is I see one group cheering about “honoring the sabbath” then the same people complaining because they couldn’t go to the store to pick up last minute snacks for the big game. 🙄

So before dinner we looked at all the sets we had bought and what the airline requirements were and got to work figuring out what fit into three suitcases, two daypacks and two tote bags given to us from the fan tour. The suitcases, once packed would be checked and we wouldn’t work about them, everything we’d have to lug around… not including anything else we might pick up “duty-free.” Before we headed out for dinner our nerves were calmer, we’d figured it out, with only a couple of question marks that weren’t impossible.