So here we go again! And this time, I can actually say ‘we’ instead of ‘I’ because I’ll have two adventure buddies in tow for the entire trip!

Here’s how it happened: I wanted to take advantage of the long New Year weekend at work, and I originally thought that might mean taking a long weekend trip. BUT THEN I realized that if I took the whole week off, I would only need to take three vacation days off work. That, my friends, is valuable. Sooo, while waiting for the bus to work some cold October morning, I began perusing flights. I found a pretty cheap one and sent a screenshot to my mom as a conversation starter, and much to my surprise, she responded something along the lines of, ‘Ohmygosh I really wanna go! Can we come back on Sunday instead of Monday so I don’t have to take work off?! Ohmygosh I really wanna go!’

I was flabbergasted. I’d been trying to get her to travel with me since before I started this blog! And always to no avail. I hadn’t technically meant to invite her on any sort of adventure, but I certainly wasn’t going to say no to my first-ever adventure buddy. In fact, the last time she went to Europe, she was pregnant with me! Don’t worry, we’re going to try to recreate as many pictures as possible.

So just shy of a week later, on Halloween night, I bought plane tickets to Copenhagen from Seattle and to Seattle from London for the two of us. We would leave December 29th and return January 7th/8th as newly cultured and more bonded than ever.

Her main stipulation for the trip was that we spend New Year’s Eve in Tivoli, a beautiful amusement park in downtown Copenhagen. While we were discussing this stipulation on the phone one evening, she asked jokingly, ‘How’s your boyfriend gonna feel about you being away on New Year’s?’ I honestly didn’t think said boy would care too much, but I responded, ‘I guess we could just invite him so we don’t have to worry about it.’ And then, to my surprise again, she exclaimed, ‘Oh, that would be fun!’ I kid you not. This really happened.

So that’s how the boy got involved. It’s quite the trip, especially since I have been left to plan everything. They won’t even help me make decisions in the moment. For example, I might ask, ‘Are you guys getting hungry? Should we find a cafe or something?’ and I will be met with silent shrugs or indifferent, distracted stares.

But no matter. The planning seems to be going well so far. We left on Friday and had a seven hour flight to Keflavik airport in Iceland. We found a wild Varun in the airport and marveled at his gorgeous $800 jacket purchased  on Champs Elysees for $30 before running off to our plane.

I was pleasantly surprised to find blankets and pillows at every seat. Mom somehow managed to watch four whole movies. I watched one and three-quarters, and Jonathan basically slept the entire time.

Jonathan’s under that blanket somewhere.

And sometimes he slept like this instead.

You know, the thought just occurred to me that I normally write these blogs to my Mom, but now that’s she’s with me on this trip, she may not even read these. Maybe I’ll start addressing them to Dad instead, in case he wants to check to make sure I’m keeping Mom alive and well. Yeah, I’ll do that. Crisis averted.

When we arrived in Iceland, we stopped for a quick layover breakfast of chia seed pudding and smoothies, croissants, and salmon bagels. I also picked up my favorite salted Icelandic chocolate so we’d have something to snack on later, and then it was back on to another plane.

This plane was a little smaller, so the rows only had two seats next to each other instead of three. Jonathan and I sat behind my mom, and it seemed like she would get the row to herself, up until a gargantuan Scandinavian man (who we later named Ingmar) came trundling over to her. He leaned his seat all the way back so that he was essentially laying in Jonathan’s lap, and he kept his arms wide on the arm rests so that my mom was forced to either cuddle or cower. (She chose to cower.) There was also a very, very, very unhappy baby on board, and he had a very ugly cry. All in all, it was a great flight. Tehehe.

We landed in Copenhagen airport, one of my favorite places on Earth, and headed for the train station. Rather than drop our things off at the Airbnb, we (meaning ‘I’) decided we’d go straight to Sweden for the day! Because why not, right?

I’d been to Malmö and Stockholm, but there is another little Swedish town to the north called Helsingborg that I’d never seen, and it was sort of close-ish to where we were staying. We dropped our things in a locker and wandered in the grey.

The buildings were pretty as can be. I could definitely see myself living here. It felt like a mini Copenhagen! My Swedish was definitely rusty, though. Whoops.

We explored some churches, wandered up and down some streets, and pursued a pretty copper-roofed building in the distance. It turned out to just be some sort of office building, but I’m sure it was used for something more grand back in its day.

Next to this building was a gigantic tower called the keep of Helsingborg. It was closed in the winter months, but we still got a nice view from the front door.

We also explored the Rose garden, which gave us another lovely view…

On our way back down to the main shopping streets, we stopped at H&M to get some warm underlayers, and then there just happened to be an adorable cafe across the street. I got some sort of cashew cheesecake thing, Jonathan got a fruit tart/cake thing, and my mom got a little open-faced sandwich.

We had a little bit more wandering to do, and I bought some very pretty socks, and then it was on to the ferry back to Daneland. My mom got a kick out of these to-go shots that were being sold on the ferry:

The bus back to Hørsholm was pretty smooth, and our little Airbnb is adorable. We got lost on the way and wandered through a park in the dark for a while, but we made it eventually. Again, I could definitely live here.

For dinner, we tried our hands at some kebab and salad pizza because it was the closest thing to our house.

And then we hit the hay around 8:30pm! We have a big day ahead of us on New Year’s Eve, so we needed all the shut-eye we could get.

Stay tuned for more! Until next time…

Venlig hilsen/ best regards,

Lizzy-wa