Alana's Visit

Leading up to Christmas, we started getting our packing ready, but we had one more adventure left. Alana was due to arrive with one of her friends for a visit from the 7th - 23rd of December.

We took them around the usual sights in Malmo, but the main part of their visit was a trip to Legoland and the German Christmas Markets in Lübeck.

I finished work officially on the 12th of December and we left early on Friday 13th to Legoland. We had an early start to make sure we arrived at opening time for the park (10am).

Tomas wasn't super interested in the Christmas Markets, so he decided to stay home, so the trip was Kristine, Cameron, me and the two girls.

We arrived at the park just on opening time (10am) and explored around. As with the last trip, the park was themed for Christmas, but some of the rides and areas were closed.

The girls had a shot at ice-skating and went on a few of the rides.

Kristine liked the new Lego Florist

and the way they used multicolored pirate hats for petals

Lego Santa

Alana tried a very hard wall climb...

Cam got eaten by a Lego raptor

That's Cameron upside down...

By about 3pm we were finished with everything we wanted to do and see, so we decided to duck over to Lego House. We didn't have enough time to do the full House experience, so instead we ducked into the shop, where they have some unique sets and where we saw some of the set creators signing the boxes.

Signing the Fortnite Sets

We spent way too much money on Lego (and too much space, considering our air freight was pretty much full!) and then headed down to Esgrus, which was just over the border in Germany, and our stop for the night. The hotel was comfortable and we had a good sleep before heading down to Lübeck in the morning.

We found parking just outside Lübeck Old Town and headed through the historic gates into the city.

The Western side of Lübeck houses the Holsten Gate (Holstentor), which was built in 1464 in Gothic style. The inscriptions on the city side read SPQL (based on the Roman SPQR - "Senatus populusque Romanus" (The Senate and People of Rome), in this case being "Senatus populusque Lubecensis" (The Senate and the People of Lübeck)). The outside of the gate reads "concordia domi foris pax" ("harmony within, peace outside"). This was added in 1871 to replace the previous inscription which was lost -"Concordia domi et pax foris sane res est omnium pulcherrima" ("Harmony within and peace outside are indeed the greatest good of all")

Holstentor

Side View

The Christmas market was huge and had the awesome backdrop of the Lübeck cathedrals. As always, they mostly consisted of roasted almonds, gingerbread, roasting meat and Glühwein (a spiced mulled wine).

Marienkirche over the markets

Hospital of the Holy Spirit

Burgtor - Northern gate, built in 1444

Crepe!

Customs House

On the way back, we stopped at the Bordershop and got home around 7pm.

On the 18th we headed out to do the usual tour of Copenhagen, but this time we caught the changing of the guards:

I then left Kristine and the girls and headed back to Malmo, while they watched the Tivoli Nutcracker:

The girls flew home on the 23rd, but we are not going to be too far behind...