15 june 2024
Books
Finished Humble Pie, by Matt Parker. Entertaining writing, but A Lot of these had more to do with computer data representation rather than what I'd expect in a book with the subtitle "A Comedy of Maths Errors." Probably I'm also simply not part of the audience of that book, because I knew quite a lot of these stories already!
Started The Left Hand of Darkness, by Ursula K. Le Guin - well I read the first of three introductions (do you recognize a seminal work by the number of its introductions and prologues?)
Travel log
The main event of the day was the visit of the Lego House, which is... let's call that a Lego Experience.
There's a large lobby with a brick manufacturing machine, which actually makes bricks, and a set of six red 2x4 bricks is distributed to each visitor - along with a card containing a guaranteed unique combination of said bricks (they say they have enough for 3000 years :) ).
Downstairs, there's a museum with the history of Lego, and a number of artifacts. A kid was very excited to show us his own wooden duck, that he had brought especially from the UK to take a picture of it with the OG Lego wooden duck in the museum. It was great :D
Upstairs, many thematic zones where you could build various things, a lot of Lego bricks everywhere, and a lot of MOCs in exhibition areas. We had a really good time building fish and making fools of ourselves trying to build cascade-worthy vehicles :)
It also felt like they were Doing The Right Things™ when it comes to accessibility and inclusivity, and not in a way that feels performative (they do communicate on it, see for instance https://legohouse.com/en-gb/press-releases/inclusive-play/, but there's no back patting on site, just the useful information). I really liked that.
For late lunch, we went to the Lego House restaurant, which was quite gimmicky (you order with a set of Lego pieces, and your food is delivered to you by gigantic Lego robots) but the food was pretty good.
At the end of tte visit, we did another run at the Lego store and got the Lego architecture version of the Lego House :)
Since it was still pretty early in the afternoon, we went east to Veije. We had a first attempt at a walk in the woods, but we're discouraged by the heavy rain that started short after we did. We did a second, more successful attempt a bit later (weather changes really quickly here this week), and ended up in a deer park (where we saw, well, a lot of deer.) Really nice.
We continued toward the sea, walked on a dike advancing in the water (which was covered in small crab pieces - we want to blame that on the local seagulls maybe?), and strolled around. We also saw an aviary, including regent parrots - it reminded me of the bird we used to occasionally birdsit until it passed away earlier this year, so that was a bit sad.
Had dinner at the pub behind the Lego House - burger and a beer, perfectly cromulent. I appreciated the fact that the pub was pretty quiet despite being quite crowded! Also, since we were back next to the Lego House, I took the opportunity to take a selfie - had forgotten that this morning!
Went back to the hotel via the Billund sculpture garden - I'm not necessarily convinced by the art, but it was a nicer path than along the main road.