We're off to Denmark

We left Tucson on Sunday morning and arrived in Aarlburg Monday afternoon (Denmark time). The flight took us up over Canada, Iceland and finally Denmark. It was a long, butt numbing ride.

Leah and Morton live in Arhus which is located on the east coast, toward the southern end of Denmark. They rented a "Summer House" in Skagen (pronounced Skane) for the first week of our visit. Morton picked us up in Aarlburg, which is about an hours drive from Skagen.

Skagen is in the northern coast of Denmark and has a population of about 9,000 people. It's a quaint town with most of the buildings and homes sporting red tile roofs and a yellow/gold paint color. It is packed with history, as is most of Denmark.

Here is how Wikipedia describes Denmark, which is about the size of Vermont.

"Denmark, with a free market capitalist economy and a large welfare state, ranks according to one measure, as having the world's highest level of income equality. Denmark has the best business climate in the world, according to the US business magazine Forbes. From 2006 to 2008, surveys ranked Denmark as "the happiest place in the world," based on standards of health, welfare, and education. The 2009 Global Peace Index survey ranks Denmark as the second most peaceful country in the world, after New Zealand. Denmark was also ranked as the least corrupt country in the world in the 2008 Corruption Perceptions Index, sharing a top position with Sweden and New Zealand. The national language, Danish, is close to Swedish and Norwegian, with which they share strong cultural and historical ties. 82.0% of the inhabitants of Denmark and 90.3% of the ethnic Danes are members of the Lutheran state church. About 9% of the population has foreign citizenship—a large portion of those are from other Scandinavian countries."

I can attest to it being a great place. Everywhere we went, the cleanliness was remarkable. Even the farms we past on the road were all freshly painted and nothing was rusted. The people are wonderful and almost everyone will gladly speak English once they see that you're an American.

They do have a large population of immigrants from Middle Eastern countries and the government has taken steps to limit their numbers.

Having gotten to know Morton, I don't think Leah could have found a better man and she has a great life in Denmark. We are happy for her and very proud of her.

They took us on so many great day trips that I've tried to sort them out in seperate sections below.