Linna and I wanted to visit a new country in Europe and we chose the Denmark area. We flew into Amsterdam and started our adventure in our rental car. We actually had no set plans on where we were going or where we were staying, in fact…we booked our first night hotel after we landed. Even though I didn’t sleep at all on the flight, I decided to drive to Bremen, Germany for our first day and night stay. By the time we checked in and showered up, it was dinner around 9:30 p.m. Our hotel was located in a very cool area near the river, the buildings and churches were glowing with the flood lights on them.

Next day we were headed to Esbjerg to see the “Man Meets the Sea” and then wanted to drive Northeast to end up at Aarhus for the night. About 1/2 hour out of Bremen, we got stuck in heavy traffic and delayed our schedule quite a bit, so we just headed to Aarhus for the night. I rented a Opel Sigma , not a bad car, but it takes awhile to get up to left lane cruising speed; I eventually got the Opel up to 145 mph. I got passed by a 7 Series BMW today in a no speed limit zone, but….I eventually passed him later in a restricted speed zone; he was abiding the law and I wasn’t. With a population of more than 300,000, Aarhus is Denmark’s second largest city and was founded by the Vikings in the 8th century. We took off walking after breakfast and headed for “Old City”, but…..along the way we noticed a cool circular walkway on top of a building. So we headed over and found out it was the ARoS Museum. The “Your Rainbow Panorama” was just added this year which was super entertaining. After a three hours of enjoyment, we headed to the “Old City”….this was actually pretty cool to see.

Now on our third day, we headed toward Copenhagen, it was actually our main destination for this trip. It was a three hour drive over from Aarhus and a $65 bridge toll! One thing we found out about Denmark….it’s damn expensive and it could be one of the most expensive cities in the world. We arrived to our hotel “First” and got checked in around 6:30 p.m., the plan was to take a nap and get up around 9:00 p.m. and head out for dinner….well, we slept through and woke up at 3:00 a.m. I couldn’t get back to sleep so I got up and worked on my emails and my blog until our 6:30 a.m. breakfast time. After breakfast was tourist activities, shopping on the famous Stroget street, we checked out Castle and the Winding Tower. The next day we checked out Carlsberg Beer and the Church of our Saviour, the famous corkscrew spiral staircase that ends at the very top. This church was completed in 1695 and is known for its baroque architecture.

After our three days in Copenhagen, we took off after breakfast back to Germany. To shorten our route, we decided to take a 45 minute ferry ride ($104) from Rodbyhavn into Germany and then we drove into Bremen (again) for the night. Bremen was only a resting stop for the night, after breakfast we headed toward Amsterdam for our last night.

We took country roads to Amsterdam, which is my favorite way of driving anywhere in the world; you gain a sense of the local culture and you get a quite peaceful ride with beautiful scenery. We got to our hotel room around 7:00 p.m. and we decided to take a nap before we headed to the Red Light district downtown Amsterdam. By the time we got up and got going into the sin city it was 11:30 p.m. Parking is always tough, it took me a good 15 minutes to find parking…we ended up walking 10 minutes into the heart of the Red Light District. On the way in, we walked by so many “coffee shops”, the sweet marijuana smell was permeating the night air. This was Linna’s first time seeing “woman for sale” standing in the windows and all the live sex shows in the area; we did some window shopping and had a few drinks. We got home about 3:30 a.m., the same day as Linna’s flight back to Seattle.

Linna headed back to Seattle and I flew later to East Midlands, United Kingdom for some work in the UK, France and Belgium with my co-worker Greg Tebb. He lives in Lincoln, UK….a very quaint city, it’s dates back to the 1700’s. I stayed at the Washington Borough Hall http://www.washingboroughhall.com a 300 year old mansion Bed & Breakfast in Lincoln, it was probably the best B&B I have ever stayed in.