After Copenhagen, we took two trains and a bus over to Billund, Denmark. “Why?” you ask. Let me tell a story. Once upon a time, a mother and her seven-year-old son watched a “Brickumentary” called Home of the Brick all about how Lego, which was already a favorite of theirs, built a one-of-a-kind museum in the town where it all started. The son, who never sat still for two moments together, snuggled next to his mama in rapt attention, delighted by everything he saw. When the film was over, he asked, “Can we go there?”
Billund, Denmark is a little out of the way when you live in Colorado and are unseasoned travelers. It’s very out of the way when there is a global pandemic. The Lego House is also closed for “most of January,” which is often when we can travel. We’ve bought tickets to Billund before, only to have them canceled because the Lego House was closed. But our chance to finally see Lego House , five years after watching Home of the Brick, came on this trip. We were going there at long last.
We’ve been to Legoland in Carlsbad, California a few times. In fact, my son and I along with his Grandmaire went to Legoland over spring break of this year. So we opted to skip the Billund theme park, as we had just spent a magical day at Tivoli, and we’re glad we did. It was quite rainy while we were in Billund. We had nice weather for when we arrived though.
We stayed at the Legoland Castle Hotel, which is about a five minute walk to the Legoland gate, a 10 minute walk to Lego HQ, and a 20 minute walk to the Lego House. For fans of Lego and families, it’s a very fun stay. They have brick building competitions (our kids each won, they can now claim that they are award-winning Lego Builders on their CVs) every night at the hotel. There are Legos for building in every room, a treasure hunt that our son was very into, and of course the decor is unparalleled.
Themed hotels are very exciting, and I was very happy to discover that the epic music they play on the grounds of the Lego Castel Hotel (and in the lobby, in the halls, outside our hotel room window) turns off at 9 p.m. until 8 a.m. the next morning. We all slept well, and I was happy to sleep in a real bed.
Time to pause my narrative for a snack. When we got off the train in Vejle before catching our bus to Billund, there was this bakery (Lagkagehuset) where they had the most mouthwatering display of goodies.
I went all in on the Hindbærsnitte, and I’m glad I did. It was raspberry deliciousness. Like a Danish pop-tart, if pop-tarts were made fresh and from whole ingredients. I’m eager to try making it at home, and think this recipe looks promising.
Had I known how quiet the food scene was in Billund, I would have bought a lot more pastries for the road. Happily, one of the tastiest restaurants in Billund is located inside the Lego House, and we had reservations for the next day. Alrighty, back to my tales of Lego adventures.
The Lego House is a museum worth seeing if you are a Lego fan. I loved the architecture, and how everything was designed to be hands-on, accessible, colorful, and playful.
There are lots and lots of opportunities to build at the Lego House. In some areas there are prompts too, which I recognized as opportunities to problem-solve in disguise. Make an eco-friendly dwelling with bananas was my prompt. Mr. Trent and our son both were supposed to build garbage trucks or something to do with green energy and waste. After you build, you get to record and display your creations.
There are also incredible, jaw-dropping Lego sculptures throughout the Lego House. This tree was the biggest we found.
Everyone was impressed, including our teenager. She’s been a long time Lego Friends fan, but for her the day was more about nostalgia. She was also dealing with some unexpected tummy troubles (food poisoning from bad chicken at dinner the night before, we think… I promise it wasn’t the Hindbærsnitte), so her Lego adventure ended shortly after lunch.
Everything was colorful, and exuberant, and fun. Somewhere on this wall was something that was built by our family, but I can’t remember what.
Every visitor gets a new bag of Lego, made on site by the machine below, when the enter the museum. It’s incredibly cool, and watching the machine is a bit like watching one of those perpetual motion sculptures.
Lunch at Mini Chef was (unsurprisingly) my favorite part of the day. You order using Lego bricks. Your meal is made by Lego Mini Chefs. You pick up your meal from these Lego robots after watching your Lego shaped bento box arrive via the spiral conveyor belt. Kids get a Lego prize along with their meal, and the menu options are healthy and tasty. I wish I had taken more photos.
After lunch we head to the basement where allegedly every Lego set ever made is held in a vault and many of them are on display. It was fun to identify sets from my childhood–we’d all play with my brother’s castle Lego growing up, and sets that we have at our house.
I headed back to the hotel with our daughter, shortly after, but somewhere along the way I managed to snap a picture with my fellow AFOL (adult fan of lego). Mr. Trent stayed and built with our son for the rest of the afternoon. Darling daughter and I booked it back to the hotel, waving to Lego HQ one last time as we discussed our safety plan for finding the nearest restroom should the walk to the hotel prove to far.
Thankfully, our daughter recovered in time for the flight back to Iceland the next evening. She opted out of the zipline at LaLandia, though. Our son has declared that when he grows up he wants to work at Lego HQ in Billund, and live in one of the neighborhoods we walked past so he can commute to work on foot and to the Lego House,where Lego designers autograph the boxes of the sets they’ve designed in silver sharpie in the gift shop. So happy memories over all.