Denmark 2015 - Day 1

Annette at YVR Vancouver Airport in Canada excited to get on the plane and go....that girl absolutely loves flying!  :)

Once again The Pedersens take a holiday to the "Land of Where The Pedersens Are Made" that being Denmark. Ed and Annette flew to Copenhagen in early May to enjoy a three week holiday in Denmark with a cruise through the Norway fjords tucked into the last week. Along the way we met some other Pedersens, that being my brother Ken and his wife Linda whom flew over a week later, and we met many new-to-us relatives in Denmark.

TIP - Click on any picture to see the pictures full size.....they look way better that way!  :)

The story takes a lot of telling so I have broken down the trip into several packages;today's package is "Day 1 - Copenhagen" 

Later packages will be more condensed for your reading pleasure....otherwise it would take you three weeks to read this!  :)

Annette and I flew into Copenhagen late in the morning on Day 1, and as we knew would be dead tired, decided to take it easy and just do a bit of site seeing within walking distance of our hotel. As we had been here recently (was it four years ago already? Seems like just a few months ago) we knew our way around this part of town so we decided to amble over to one of the main tourist areas a 10 minute walk away and grab a bite to eat.  

Across the busy street from the main gate of the Tivoli Gardens Amusement Park, one of the oldest amusement parks in Europe, stands the statue of Hans Christian Andersen. You may recognize some of his children classics such as "The Little Mermaid", "The Princess And The Pea", "The Emperor's New Suit", and 165 other titles.

The statue of H.C. Andersen is on the corner of the City Hall Plaza....across the plaza is the start of the Stroget....five long blocks just perfect for strolling and window shopping, and of course, some for-real buying 

 The Stroget is the pedestrian walkway in Copenhagen and one of the longest walkways in Europe. Many streets in a row have been blocked to vehicle traffic creating close to a mile long shopping bonanza of boutiques, bars, cafes, and tourist shops. This is the main street of Copenhagen dating back as far as 1728, and today it is still the main street, only now for the people. On our last trip we discovered the Lagkagehuset, a combination bakery and cafe that became our fave place for breakfast.

Every couple of blocks or so the Stroget opens into a plaza which is like breathing in a big gulp of air after walking along the narrow streets between 3 and 4 story buildings. Most of the plazas host a number of cafes and grills with patio chairs and tables just waiting for you to stop, rest, and watch the world go past.

We were too early in the day to take full advantage of the chairs but I can easily see us sitting there sipping a coffee or a cool drink enjoying life.

Ummm...yeah....I have several really good stories made up as to why I took this picture but my stories sound kind of weak in the telling....so...ummmm.... yeah.....oh look, another picture further down the page! 
(BTW - you do remember that you can click on the picture to see the full size version - right?)

We walked about half way down the Stroget, then hooked a right with the intention of circling back to our hotel to see if our room was ready; we were so looking forward to sleeping! Getting to Europe from Vancouver is usually an 18 hour adventure....by the time you wake up on the morning to leave, you tend to have had only 4-5 hours of sleep, and by the time your head hits the bed in Copenhagen, you've been awake for close to 24 hours.The excitement of the trip keeps you going but sure leaves you dragging your arse the next day. So, being world class travelers and knowing everything now, we were smart enough to realize that we needed sleep.

Like  most cities in Europe the major roadways for goods were the rivers, and when the river did not go far enough, canals extended the boat mans reach. Copenhagen is no different, and on our last visit we took a canal ride around the city through the various canals and interlocking river stretches; I highly recommend this type of site seeing.....we make it a point to have a canal/river ride in every town where possible as you see so much more of the original heart of the city.

 One of the largest plazas in the city is just outside the doors of the Bertel Thorvaldens Museum which houses the great works of the Danish sculptor of the same name. This plaza was a surprise in its size, and by the view of the old buildings it provided across a canal.One of the buildings had a date stamp of 1748.

The old part of the city is jam packed with history, this sign only tells part of the story regarding what is in the area. The sign lists four museums, a Royal Library, and a palace all in the same area; that's pretty impressive!

Almost back at our hotel we pass the Glyptotek, a museum totally paid for and supported by the Carlsberg family, of the famed Carlsberg beer legacy. We did not have time to tour this museum, we would need another month to tour all the museums in Copenhagen alone.

So....passing a window in one of the museums I spot these bottles......as I don't read Danish I'm hoping that this is some kind of booze.....another part of me is thinking that the museum is offering Danish-Viking blood as some kind of fund raiser and that there are dozens of ferocious Vikings down in the basement letting their blood run into pails for collection!

Anyways, end of Day 1 story telling....next episode will highlight a week long car tour of Denmark with stops in the far north of Denmark, and then running way down south to the small Island of Aero to meet distant cousins.

These pictures and many others from today can be found on my Flickr web site here.  PSSST...right click and choose "Open In A New Window"

If you enjoyed the story leave me a note in the comments section below - it's always nice to get feed back on what you liked and what more you would like to see. You can access the comments section by clicking on the field titled "No Comments" (You'll be the first) or "1 comments" or "2 comments" depending on how many comments are there already 

Danish Roots Found - Visit To Denmark

As Annette and I had gotten a taste of Europe by travelling to London and Paris on two different occasions, we were ready for some place a little farther on the European mainland. Annette had her sights on Belgium, and I thought as long as we were in the neighbourhood, I wanted to visit Denmark - land of Vikings and populated with people with names like "Pedersen".

Rick Steeves the travel guy had visited Copenhagen in Denmark  on one of his shows and ever since I had wanted to go there and touch bases with my Father's roots. So, off to Europe we go to explore the "old countries". In Denmark we visited to the Island of Aero where many of my family members are from; in particular we visited the town of Aeroskobing, one of the main towns on this small island.

 Turns out I have many distant cousins living in Denmark; and, through joining a Descendants of Aero FaceBook group, and a FaceBook group of Aero residents, I have recently found many family relations. Some are close by, in the form of a cousin who lives less than a day's drive away, and another, whom runs the Aero FaceBook page on Aero and is apparently a distant cousin 9 or 10 generations back....I can't even think what that makes him to me. First cousin 9 times removed, 9th cousin on my Father's side? Who knows...all I know is that is pretty interesting to go from knowing very little about your heritage to having an explosion of  familial knowledge at your fingertips!

Click here to be taken to my Flickr page where you can view all the pictures of our visit to Aero.

Europe 2011 - Part 4

Europe Part 4

Today is the day, we finally reach Denmark, native land on my Father's side and the origin of the Pedersen clan. This is a day I've waited for a number of years, and truth be told, even before it was a solid thought and a planned trip, it was a buzz at the back of my brain. It was there before I really knew what it meant...like a whisper in the fog, I could hear the quiet voice but couldn't make out the words. I had to have enough "life" under my belt and the wisdom of age to understand the nuances of my own human psyche...to understand the words that were being spoken... "you have to go home"...........

Which was a hard message to understand when you're a young man living in the city where you were born, as you are already home and your life is good with little responsibilities and fun being number one on your list of things to do.....still the whisper was there even then.

I felt the full tug when we crossed over the border from Germany into Denmark and drove a few miles north till we came to a small village called Rise. This was one of the areas where some of my relatives had lived, and died; first stop was the old church and a walk around the pleasant cemetery that was more like a garden than a final resting place. First thing we noticed is that, either I stumbled onto an enclave of Pedersens or it's a common name in Denmark. Turned out the latter is true; Pedersen is a very common name, just like Williams or Brown or Johnson. As a matter of fact, the most common names we seen consisted of a variation of just three names. Jensen, Peters, Pedersen....you could have any name you liked as long as it had those three names in it.

It was surreal walking around the graveyard and seeing all the Pedersen headstones; many of these people were obviously "strangers" to my family tree, yet it was enough to make me overcome with emotion to realize that I was finally "home". I had to take a few minutes to level myself out before I could continue wandering around the cemetery, looking at the headstones and graves of strangers that shared my blood line going all the way back to the Vikings.

After getting our fill of the sights and sounds of the lovely church and the graveyard, we drove a block down the small street into the village and realized after going up and down a couple of small city-sized blocks, we had seen the whole village. We pulled into the parking lot of an old folks care home, the driveway adorned with life size statues of an old man and an old woman. It was evident that the community valued their senior citizens as the care centre was the nicest and newest building in the village.

Heading north on the freeway we had another 100 hundred miles or so to go before we cut east and headed to the shores of the Baltic Sea. Our destination was Sonderborg, a seaside town where we would spend the night before catching the ferry over to the island of Aeros.

Sonderborg is a lovely town with an old section right down at the waterfront; congrats to the town as they have revitalized the seaside area and made it a popular tourist destination for Danes. There are only 3-4 good hotels in Sonderborg, one of them was a Best Western; turns out it was the largest of the hotels and was also a conference hotel. I can understand the draw to have your company's convention in the tourist town and enjoy the scenery while you are there. Problem is, when you drop into town as a tourist winging it when it comes to hotels, it makes getting a room a bit of a challenge.

We snagged the last room they had - one of the suites and we got it at a discount rate equivalent to 240 Euros, which is about $480.00 CDN. Not much choice, as the next nearest town was either 120 miles to the north, or we drove back into Germany to Hamburg, now approx 150 miles to the south. OK, Sonderborg it is!

So here's the thing....this would happen to us several times more while we were in Denmark. The room was originally 350 Euros and we did get a bit of a discount when we told them we were tourists from Canada, but when I pulled out my credit card to pay and the young lady behind the desk spotted my last name Pedersen on the card, suddenly we were treated like long lost cousins coming home. The room was suddenly reduced more and the friendly desk clerk became even more helpful and suggested places to see and places to eat. When we got up to our room, the TV screen said in Danish "Welcome to Edwin Pedersen"...at least I think it said that...I could understand the "velkommen" and "Pedersen" parts. :)

We dropped our bags in the sitting room and wandered into the bedroom to look out the window and what a great view we had of the outer harbour; that's the picture you see at the top of the page. We watched a large two masted schooner drift into the inner harbour as we simply enjoyed the serenity of the scene, complete with soundscape of birds chirping in the gardens around the hotel. As much as it cost to stay here, I have to say it was worth it!

We went out around 8.00 PM to grab a bite at one of the lovely dockside cafes but they had all closed up for the night; I guess we weren't quite into the full on tourist season yet. We ended up on the outskirts of town at the local Burger King, of all places. It was a busy place as the local Danes enjoyed this bit of Americana. Again prices weren't cheap....each of our meals for a burger, fries and a Coke was $18.00 CDN. On the plus side we did get to talk to a young cop for a few minutes; we wanted to get an idea of the area but the young guy had been recently transferred here from somewhere to the north, so he didn't know much about the area. The older cop waiting in the car was impatient with the tourists who were cutting into his meal time and said something in Danish to hurry the young guy along. We said thanks in Danish to the officer, "Tak", and we got a smile out of him as he jumped back in the car.

We meandered back into town and did a sight seeing tour of the town and the surrounding inlets and farm land. We also cruised a few miles out of town to find the ferry landing and check on the schedule to ensure what we read online was the same as the posted schedule at the dock. We headed back to our expensive but nice hotel suite and opened the windows for a while as we read more about Denmark, including the region we were in now, and the regions we were heading to in the coming days. We went to sleep with the curtains open, had a sound sleep, and awakened early the next morning to the sun streaming in and the promise of excitement on the small Island of Aero and the village of Aeroskobing, main homestead of the Pedersen clan!

Take the time to view the video of the area, it's only a few minutes long and the scenery is wonderful.
You can view the video full screen by clicking here

Spending The Day in Steveston

First day of holidays for me and I spend it exactly the way I want - I slept in and acted like a slug for the rest of the day! Threw a nice salmon steak on the BBQ for dinner, added a few accoutrement's and a lovely dinner was had by Annette and I.

OK, OK, that's not was this story is about....let's talk about day 2....

Sunday of the long weekend in Maple Ridge and it's smoking hot.....34C in the shade..what to do, what to do.....?

I know, head to Richmond where it is cooler by the ocean. So, we decide to make it an "all Richmond day" by partaking in some plane watching at Vancouver Airport, then heading over to the Steveston area and riding around the dikes where we could enjoy the ocean breeze.

Steveston is one of the first settled areas of Richmond, and made it's name and wealth on the strength of the salmon cannery industry at the turn of the century. The small "village" has retained it's historical persona and as such makes it a tourist magnet; same for the Steveston dockside area where boats pull into the government docks with their fresh catch of the day. The booming tourist industry has led to a growth of restoration of the dock and surrounding area - a large boardwalk now houses many small and mid size restaurants taking advantage of the fresh catch of the day.

Steveston is also home to one of my brothers, which means we could add another element of our day by having a family get together - in that vane I called the "Steveston" Pedersens and said said we would be in the area and we should get together and go out for dinner, and I also called the other "Maple Ridge" Pedersens and left a message for them to meet us in Steveston around dinner time.

So, we park the Jeep at my brother's place in Steveston and set off on a bike ride along the south dike of Richmond. I'm good for about 5-6 miles before I get tuckered out, Annette is good for about 20 miles, so I had to know we would be going beyond my comfort zone. We rode along the dike, with one of my destinations as Finn Slough, which was a small slough where Finnish fishermen originally squatted 100 years ago. Over the years progressive family generations have lived in the same shacks,still squatting as their parents did. At high tide the fishermen could pilot their boats up the small slough right to the door of their shack - on today's visit it would appear that is no longer doable as the slough was empty and grass covered mud banks were too high for boat navigation.

Still the area is very photogenic and I always enjoy stopping here and snapping a few pictures to share.

We continued on down the dike for a total distance of 6 miles before I called it quits and we decided to turn around. Six miles out and six miles back seemed doable...until we quickly realized the return 6 miles was fighting a head wind...uhhh.....it sections it was tough going against the wind in the 30C heat. But we, or more correctly I, persevered (Annette had no problems) and we made it back to my brother's place just in time to see the Maple Ridge Pedersens arrive.    

A chance to relax on the front patio in the shade and glug some cool refreshments before we decided to walk the few blocks over to the Steveston dockside where Alan had made restaurant reservations out on the deck. We chowed down on a seafood based dinner as we enjoyed the cooling off of the day and had a great seat to watch the sun go down over the Strait Of Georgia.

After dinner we had a walk around the village, seen some of the locations where the TV series "Once Upon A Time" is filmed, and then we sat on a bench along the wooden boardwalk overlooking the darkened Fraser River, enjoying a late night coffee and a perfect West Coast summer night. We strolled along the boardwalk in a long loop back to Al's place for another relaxed conversation around the patio table before Annette and I decided it was time to jump back in the Jeep to head home.

A midnight ride home with the top off the Jeep and the warm summer night sky above us was a perfect ending to a fun filled day in Steveston.

 To see all the photos go to Ed's Flickr web site and then start up the slide show (upper right above the pictures)....it will be enough to make you wish you were there!   :)