Old Man's Town

No, this post isn’t strictly about my life in Copenhagen, but let’s just overlook that for now, eh?

Anyway my dad, my son and myself hopped in a car early yesterday morning and drove for the better part of three hours to Legoland in Billund – far west of Copenhagen for those in the know.

While I visited quite a few times as a kid – since we lived nearby – this was Eskild’s first time here. Luckily he loved it, although it was pretty damn crowded. A lot more crowded than I remember. But what the heck. Times change.

Extreme miniatures

For us adult nerds there are are a crap load of insanely detailed miniature models built entirely out of Lego Bricks. For instance this airport.

Miniature airport in Legoland

Kick ass rides for the boys

Along with the miniatures there are around 50 different rides and attractions for the kids – and us playful adults – to try out.

One major change I noticed since I was there as a kid is that the new attractions they’ve added over the years really cater to boys’ fantasies. Which is obviously cool when you’re bringing your five-year-old son along.

So Pirates, a Knights’ Castle, a Pyramid – Indy Jones style – Vikings and an undersea journey Atlantis style were new to me.

However an old classic in the Wild West – gold digging was still alive and well. Which Eskild really enjoyed too.

Eskild showing off his gold medal.

The premise is pretty simple. You get a tin sieve and have to find gold nuggets in sand an water. When you’ve collected enough you can turn it in and the cowboy and cowgal supervisors will turn it into a medal with an “imprinting” machine.

Also in the Wild West is this insanely detailed Lego copy of Mt. Rushmore.

1.5 million Lego bricks to make four heads.

The construction is made up of 1.5 million bricks. At the knights’ castle I noticed a scenery with a ghost and a dragon – much smaller than Rushmore here – which was made up of around 78,500 or so bricks. That had taken around 827 hours to build. I won’t even dare to think of how long Mt. Rushmore here too then.

To top it all off we hopped into the largest Lego store in Europe and got some awesome space stuff, which I’ll probably show off when all of it is built.

On a final note, my dad snapped a huge bunch of shots too. I’ll have him upload them to Flickr and update this post with a link.