Returning to the 15th Happiest Place on Earth (40th Happiest State)🙄- Day 8 “All Good Things…”

Sunday: Walked 3.62 miles, Flew a few more than 4400

12:30 CET to 11:something or other EST Flight from Billund to Amsterdam to Detroit to Indianapolis to home to cats to bed.

Got up early to get breakfast. Said goodbye to the guard rhino in our room. Checked out and headed to the airport.

Goals for the day: refuel & return the car, get the two adventure labs and one virtual at the airport and pick up the Billund Airport exclusive LEGO set. Then go home.
Note: The Billund Airport set had been recently retired and therefore no longer available. 😪 They had a great sale, but… at this point, I don’t have room or need any other LEGO sets at this time.

By the Numbers:

Hotels: 3 – Refborg (Billund), Grand Hotel (Odense), Osterport (Copenhagen)
Longest stay: 3 days
Shortest stay: maybe 18 hours
Geocaches: 30ish – including Denmark’s First Geocache!
Adventure Labs completed: 12 and a bunch of stages started but incomplete (Yes, St. Canute- I’m looking at you… solving ALs in another language with written answers can be “challenging”)

Trolls: 6

LEGO sets: 13
Minifigs: 10 (4 exclusive to the Fan Tour, 6 exclusive to a location)
LEGO Keyhains: 4

Cost for two people:

• Tour Cost: $1323
• Money spent on souvenirs & LEGO: about $1200 Yes, most of this was for me🙄
• Lodging (7 nights 3 cities): about $1250
• Meals- formal meals at a pub or restaurant including alcohol and under one circumstance a tip (we were near the U.S. Embassy🙄): about $500 Breakfasts were included at most of the hotels.
• Rental Car for 8 days (a Audi SUV thing): $172
• Petrol: $105 (one fill up)
• Parking, Trains, & Tolls: about $300
• Flight Cost: $1900

Total (for two): about $6700 (rounding up)

Lessons Learned/Notes aka wha? huh? 🤔:

When we travel Sue and I try to figure out what we would do differently or what things were different than what we expected.

• Give ourselves one full day (and night) in a place once we land. In this case, we should have either stopped and spent the night in Amsterdam or spent an extra night in Billund at the start to recuperate from the flight. Next time- fly through Iceland- Icelandair actually has a long layover program 😁
• Stay in a place around three days to get acclimated (postage stamp rule – Something we discovered in England to really get to know a place stay and explore in an area on the map about the size of a postage stamp) We tend to forget this over the excitement of visiting a new place, but it is good to keep in mind. It was nice to settle in Copenhagen and Billund instead of rushing to a new place each morning. Avoid the “It’s Tuesday, it must be Belgium” Syndrome.
• It’s amazing how other countries seem to be more trusting. It is nice to see and almost unimaginable to consider in the U.S. except maybe in small towns.
• Danish chicanes instead of speed bumps?!? While heading to Jelling we discovered a spot where to slow people down they had one lane that had a zig zag pattern, which required you to slow down to get through. A large portion of speed bumps in Denmark are in the middle of the lane.
• A lot of the roads outside of the main highways were 1.5 lanes so when another care is coming at you you both pull over a bit. Allowing the roads to not use up the much space.
• 110kph = 68 mph so things move a bit slower and therefore take a bit longer to get from point A to point B.
• USB C outlets in cars?!? America is so “sophisticated” and high tech, but it was interesting that our rental only had USB-C outlets, and not USB-A which is still pretty much still the standard in the U.S.
• Why do I have to sign my credit card receipt? Locals didn’t seem to need to sign, just scan and go. Why did some cards never work? (Yes, MINI CARD I’m looking at you). When I purchased things from a person, I had to sign the receipt, something I don’t always have to do in the U.S. but also most automated kiosks seemed to reject my card (as invalid), was this because I couldn’t sign the receipt? What is done with these signed receipts? Do they get sent (via the post) to the bank? 🤔
• Many places preferred credit to cash… we actually didn’t exchange money during our trip. we had some leftover Euros from our pre-COVID trip to Paris and it was rather amusing that we couldn’t find a currency exchange open when we found them.
• What happened to getting your passport stamped? It seemed that Amsterdam and the coming into Detroit were the only places that stamped my passport.
• European flights- passengers are told they are not allowed to photograph or film passengers or crew members without their permission… but how am I going to get followers and likes on my YouTube/TikTok Channel?
• On ALL flights we were given the safety instructions in English… is this because Americans are so stupid they wouldn’t know what to do and are most likely to sue the company if anything were to happen – with the American claiming ignorance because “They spoke with a funny accent” and they couldn’t understand them.
• Delta’s video makes me think of a Church service. It just seemed to be set up like you were in some new age church with yoga mats surrounded by nature. The Flight Attendant on screen standing in the middle delivering a calm sermon on how to fasten your seatbelt.
• Set reasonable goals. If anything a true “Whimventurer” under plans in case something happens to pop up. If you have one thing that has a timed entry, that’s enough. What if you really get lost in that exhibit? Do you leave to make it to the next thing on the list? If you give yourself one goal each day, you don’t have a chance of being disappointed. We would never had gone on our first Troll hunt if we hadn’t had a flexible schedule.
• When buying ceramic pieces as souvenirs either pack them nested around squishy things in your checked luggage, or expect to have your carryon bag pulled at every single security checkpoint, I guess a ceramic horse/dragon looks a lot like C4 when viewed from an X-Ray machine.
• Thoughts on traveling as an anxious ‘Murican. There is an image of the stereotypical American tourist in a foreign country and that image makes me sick. Frankly Americans in the U.S. who act like they are better than anyone else make me cringe. I barely speak English properly, let alone another language and we believe that everyone in the world should speak English. I do find it amusing that the Europeans tend to rub it in by having the Union Jack next to English translations and not the Stars and Stripes. Even though the translation is mostly for Americans. I’m guessing there are a few people out there that would prefer the stars and bars, but then again they rarely leave their home town. I guess for me when traveling I am the polar opposite of the stereotype. I rarely talk, might nod my head, if I have to order I am overly apologetic during the process. I joke that we travel on a whim… we do for some thing’s, but I’m pretty much a basket case hoping I’m not too embarrassing. When we traveled this time, I brought a classic looking leather jacket, collared shirts, dark jeans, dress pants and avoided tennis shoes. I found in the past this helped me blend in- instead of the guy in the red baseball cap and “God Bless ‘Murica” t-shirt in flip flops and cut offs. Of course now everyone wears tennis shoes (trainers), but I’ll stick to walking around a city in my Doc Martens. When I travel I’d much rather have people think I’m British, or Canadian. The world tends to see us as obnoxious spoiled bullies for the most part, especially with the way our corporations run our politics and our media depicts the average American.
• How many times does your bag need to go through security? We had to go through security in Billund, Amsterdam, and Detroit. While I understand the need for safety, What could I have done in mid-flight or after landing to suddenly become a flight hazard? In Detroit it made a bit of sense since we had to handle our checked luggage, but still…
• Since I can’t sleep on a plane: Movie Reviews: Wonka ⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎, Barbie ⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎, Oppenheimer ⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎, & Blue Beetle ⭐︎⭐︎⭐︎ All the films were nice diversions. I started with Wonka since we were behind the Wonka float at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and wanted to understand why nothing actually happened on the float during the parade and only a dance routine in front of an empty float occurred at the end… I actually stopped part way through the film and came back to finish it later. None were what I would consider 5 star amazing films, but they held my interest for the most part. Barbie was a unique social commentary that was very well done, I understand why it has become a cultural phenomenon. Oppenheimer was a nice historical piece and I understand why it did so well at the Oscars. Blue Beetle… I wanted to give a DC film a chance since they seem to have an aura of despair surrounding them… It was a good super hero movie, like Barbie, some social commentary this time dealing with plight of Latin Americans in the US, but for the most part a good escapist film, which is really what super hero films should be.
• Flight home last leg… “Please do not change your seat- it’s a balance issue.” Was it Phil Foglio who did a comic about how planes actually fly due to certain people, who without them on a plane the plane wouldn’t fly? They are seated strategically to aid in keeping the plane in the air.
• Last flight 39 minutes of first class! I felt so special.
• “Hey, I tell you what is. Big city, hmm? Live, work, huh? But not city only. Only peoples. Peoples is peoples. No is buildings. Is tomatoes, huh? Is peoples, is dancing, is music, is potatoes. So, peoples is peoples. Okay?” – Pete from The Muppets Take Manhattan “No matter where you go, there you are” and always- peoples is peoples.

I will miss our guard Rhinoceros from our time in Billund. Thank you for keeping us, and our stuff safe during our visit.