Hot, Hot Summer Days

(written by Lindsay)

In comparison to last summer, you'd think we were living in Texas. This year, we have had two long stretches of hot dry days, with temps reaching the mid-80's. This may not sound like much to all you Americans with an air-conditioning thermostat on your wall, but when there are very few places to get relief from the heat, it wears you out. Due to all the brick and the stone courtyard, our house gets pretty hot in the afternoon and stays that way until early morning. But I'm actually not complaining (much) because soon (maybe tonight) it will all be over, and for the first time in years, I have a decent sun tan!

We have been out and about quite a bit in recent days, in large part because it's no fun to sit and bake in our house. Last weekend, we had a fun multi-stop adventure in Copenhagen. It's that time of year when all the locals are sunning on the beaches of Spain, France and Italy and all of the tourists from everywhere else are making their way through the tourist attractions. So we got to pretend to be tourists for a day, which is always fun. Our first stop was the Rundtårn near Nørreport station, a spiral ramped tower adjacent a church which leads up to a great view of the city. Tom and I were hoping to take a good look around, but it turned out that Cavan was not too thrilled about the view (or possibly the height) and he quickly pulled us back down into the stairwell.

After the tower, we made our way to Tøjhusmuseet or the Royal Danish Artillery Museum. We found it in one of our guidebooks earlier that day, and thought it would be just the thing for the little guy, who loves to pretend to shoot his guns. There, we saw weapons from canons to machine guns to swords, and uniforms and armor to boot. Cavan really gravitated toward one canon in particular, which he kept asking if we could buy.

After the artillery and a quick lunch under a shady tree in the park, we set off past Nyhavn to a harbor where a large ship from Italy was docked. We had read in the paper that there would be tours and thought it might be cool to check out. The tours included the top deck only, and honestly, I was too terrified to enjoy it. After climbing the narrow stairs up to the deck, with the ocean looming below, and then noticing that the edges of the ship had absolutely no barriers to prevent small children from falling right off the side, I clung onto Cavan the entire time. I was so glad to be back on dry land.

To conclude our day in the hot, hot sun, we stopped for awhile at a playground in the shade to let Cavan run around and to recoup my sanity. It was a nice, fenced in area. We relaxed on a bench while Cavan climbed and spun around on this spinning seat thing. We weren't paying much attention to what he was doing over there, so apparently he'd been spinning a bit too much - when he stood up to walk back to us, he began walking at a right angle to where he intended and crashed into another couple who was sitting on a bench. I couldn't stop laughing. He just looked so confused. All in all, a great day out. Cavan is such a good traveller, and it is so fun to take him to experience these new things all the time. How lucky we are to live close to such an interesting capitol city!