Exploring our Horizons

If you are anything like us, you’ll probably have a list as long as your arm of all the incredible places you want to travel to, whether alone, with a friend or partner, or with your family in tow. We’ve been really lucky so far in having taken our boys to some pretty awesome places like Sweden, Iceland, Denmark, Hong Kong, Malaysia and Japan; that’s a pretty impressive set of passport stamps for a 3 and 5 year old!

But we always wonder how much are the boys really appreciating what they are experiencing? It feels pretty silly asking ourselves this question sometimes. They’re just little kids after all, with little life experience to draw on and compare new experiences against. Fellow parents know that kids are on auto-pilot most of the time; they’ll take part in whatever is going on, they go where you drag them. So how can you make sure they appreciate it when they’re experiencing something amazing?

Our Boys Surveying Their Valley

It’s hard to say. One way could be to ensure they experience as much of their day to day surroundings as possible, exploring your town, or valley, or county, inside out. We usually find something to be exciting or amazing because it’s different to what you are used to experiencing.

We’ve been doing a fair bit of walking on the mountains around our town lately. We’re lucky that we grew up and now live in the beautiful South Wales valleys, surrounded by mountains and forests to explore. We’re lucky that our children can experience the sort of childhoods we did.

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It was during one of these family treks that I came to this conclusion. It's important to let your kids first explore their horizons before you try to expand them. You've got to know what's in your backyard to appreciate the joy of eventually jumping over the fence. In the process, you'll probably find there's plenty adventure and wonder to be found just around the corner (or behind our house in this case) as there is on the other side of the world.

I’m hoping that once our boys have seen all that our Valley has to offer them, it will dawn on them how amazing those adventures in Kuala Lumpur or Reykjavik really are!

Here are a few snaps from our recent mountain walks.

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Past Adventures: Balinese New Year

Before marriage and kids and mortgages and council tax and pensions and multivitamins and all that heavy crap that comes with being a proper adult, we spent a year backpacking around the world in 2005. Weirdly we experienced 3 different New Years’ celebrations that year; firstly in the UK before we left, then Chinese New Year in Hong Kong, then Balinese New Year in Indonesia, all within a couple of months.

Before Marriage and Kids...

Balinese New Year was definitely the weirdest. We were staying in the capital Kuta (a tourist trap hell hole – seriously, if you’re going to Bali, avoid Kuta, there’s plenty of amazing alternatives for a week before heading for Australia. We spent our time learning to surf, dodging aggressive shop keepers and battling dysentery.

Bali New Year Celebrations

Our stay also coincided with the six day New Year’s celebrations, which included lots of vibrant carnival style parades (below are some picture we took of the bizarre parade floats) where you’re encouraged to make as much noise as possible to rouse the evil spirits out in to the open.  The third day is called Nyepi (meaning to “keep quiet”) where the whole island shuts down and goes in to 24 hours of silence. No flights, no traffic, no people on the streets and no lights allowed. The idea is that the evil spirits that were driven in to the open earlier will think all the polite locals and drunk tourists have deserted the place, leaving no one to torment or corrupt, and will themselves then leave the island, setting the scene for the people to magically reappear a day later to a freshly cleansed Bali.

Carnival Style Parade

Giant Parade Floats

With Kuta being the tourist capital of Bali, you can imagine how hard it is to enforce Nyepi upon on the thousands of tourists, who are instructed to hunker down in their rooms for the day, in silence, lights out. As the day wore on, and particularly in the evening, you’d notice a few apartment lights flicker on across the eerie darkened town, hear the odd set of scurrying footsteps outside and voices shattering the silence of the night. These instances of disrespect gathered momentum until the local administrators simply flicked the switch to the town’s power supply, shutting the whole place down until the next morning.

How did we know? Well we were watching Arnold Schwarzenegger movies with the volume turned right down, when the TV clicked off just as he was about to scalp a baddie with a precisely thrown circular saw blade (hey, we’re only human).

We spent the rest of our time in Bali travelling outside of Kuta to various ancient temples, visiting the spectacular active volcano Mount Batur, and made a trip to the wonderful Tegalalang Rice Terraces in the countryside surrounding Ubud. These adventures reminded us that there was more to Bali than the litter strewn beaches and vomit soaked streets on Kuta. If fate should drop us on that provincial Indonesian island again, we’ll be driving right past Kuta.

Mount Batur

Telgalalang Rice Terrace

Balinese Temples

Trip Review: Legoland Billund, Denmark

Lego, are you kidding me? We’ve got two kids, of course we were going to end up in Legoland! The only question was London or Denmark.....?

Hello Billund, home of the Lego Group! But let’s back up for a second.

We knew the boys would lose it over a trip to a Lego theme park, but in all truth, we wanted to go too. A few months prior we had watched Channel 4’s excellent documentary on the Lego Group ‘The Secret World of Lego’ (it’s still viewable here - Check it out), which visited the charming company town of Billund in Denmark. We seriously love Scandinavia; in fact we got engaged in Denmark back in 2009, so we needed little more motivation to book the tickets.

Legoland Hotel

Like many of our trips, this one became an extended family affair. We’re talking Grandparents, an Auntie and a Cousin, as well as the four of us. That’s 8 people in total; we were rolling deep on this one.

We booked with Ryanair (£55 Adult return, £32 Child Return), flying out of London Stansted and landing at Billund International. That’s right, they’ve got their own super convenient airport in the town, which Lego built out of real bricks back in 1964.

What you need to know about Billund is that it’s a very small town. We’re talking just over 6,000 people, so there’s not too much to do there when brick fatigue eventually sets in. Recognising this problem, somebody went ahead and constructed the Lalandia Holiday Village and Water Park, right across the road from Legoland.

There’s also the official Legoland Hotel, but as there was eight of us, we chose to hire one of Lalandia’s beautiful Nordic holiday homes and self cater for 5 nights (£855 shared between 8 of us). This package came with passes to their awesome water park, which the Grandparents loved as much as the kids did. We also picked ourselves up a minibus from Europcar so we could explore the region (more on that later).

Lalandia Nordic House Plus 8

We highly recommend staying at Lalandia; it’s a welcome haven when you’ve heard ‘Everything is Awesome’ blasted out for the hundredth time. Which brings us on to the main attraction.

Legoland was great; not amazing like the behemoths of Disney or Universal Studios, but quietly confident in its own offering. It mixes its traditional attractions (intricately built model towns and cities) with its new lifeblood (licensing every kid friendly brand from Star Wars to DC Comics) in a balanced way, throwing in a selection of cool thrill rides for kids of all ages.

Their Haunted House was a particular favourite with the boys, as was the Atlantis by Sea Life aquarium, 4D Movie Experience and the various rollercoasters spread across different themed lands.

Adults and older kids should head over to Polar Land and strap in to the crazy Ice Pilots ride (see it here), although you may want to skip this if you suffer from any conditions that being thrown around violently by a gigantic robot claw might aggravate.

Lego Mount Rushmore

Giant Lego Spider

Lego Oil Rig in Miniture Land

One of the great things about Scandinavia is that everything seems to be designed well and works efficiently, and Legoland is no exception. It isn’t a huge theme park, and you could comfortably do everything in one day with time to spare, so bear this in mind when deciding the duration of your trip. However, the attractions are varied enough to keep you energized throughout your visit, and the food on offer is pretty good too. As you can imagine, the Giftshop was Bedlam at the end of the day, so it may be worth hitting that place as soon as you arrive to avoid the inevitable throng of sugar powered kiddies either having a meltdown or bullying the adults to splash their cash.

Entry to the park isn’t cheap, and although you can shave a few Danish Krone from the price by buying online and at least 7 days in advance (still around £30.00 each), we did a bit of research and found that you can buy Discount Vouchers on eBay for just a few Euros which can save you up to 50%. We were unsure if the vouchers were legit, especially as they were written in German, but we took the risk and it paid off!

So with Legoland all wrapped up, what else is there to do during your trip to Billund? Brick enthusiasts can take walk through the town centre and check out the Lego HQ, as well as the home of Lego inventor Ole Kirk, but that’s about it.

There are a few restaurants and cafes for you to chose from (there’s a list here), but as we were self catering, we mainly ate at the holiday home, having stocked up from the local supermarkets. We’re a pretty healthy bunch, but we do like to eat dirty every now and again (who doesn’t), so we called in to the Tulip Time Out burger joint for some awesome Danish burgers and hot dogs.

Venturing Outside of Billund

Remember we mentioned the minibus that we hired? It wasn’t cheap at £366 for a 4 day hire, but it came in handy when we exhausted both Legoland and Lalandia’s water park. We did some planning ahead and decided to take a day trip to the town of Ribe, Denmark’s oldest town, which is around an hour’s drive from Billund.

Ribe

Ribe Architecture

Ribe really is a charming and picturesque place, great for a lazy day strolling in the streets and holing up at the cafes (don’t walk by the Isvaflen Ice Cream Parlour without trying one of their awesome cones). Photographers will have a field day exploring the historic architecture of the town, headlined by the imposing Ribe Cathedral.

Isvaflen Ice Cream and The Night Watchman

There are many walking tours of the town available, but do yourself a favour and join The Night Watchman on his free evening tour. It takes around 45 minutes to complete and he delivers it in both Danish and English, regaling you with stories of Royalty, Witches, Pirates and collapsing Cathedrals. The kids were half in awe, half terrified. You can find more details here.

We also made the short journey from Billund to Givskud Zoo to take the kids on a safari, navigating our way around the park in our minibus and getting up close with the animals. Tickets cost around £20 per adult (ages 11 upwards), £10 for kids (3 – 11) and free for under 3’s. It’s also a little cheaper if you book online in advance.

Almost a third of the species at the zoo are on the endangered list, so we got to see some pretty cool creatures like Grey Wolves, Southern White Rhinos and Red Pandas. There was also an awkward scene when we came upon a pretty intense mating session between two gigantic Western Lowland Gorillas, which had the kids asking us all kinds of uncomfortable questions!

However, the highlight of the day was driving through the Lion Park, where you got very close to Northern Europe’s largest pride; close enough to smell the animal carcasses that they were feasting on! There was also a large model Dino Park on site, which the kids were totally into and gave us a chance to stretch our legs after our safari. Givskud Zoo is definitely worth a visit if you venture outside of Billund.

We Survived Legoland Billund!

So that was our 4 day, 5 night trip to Legoland Billund and Ribe. It wasn’t exactly a cheap trip, but it was lots of fun and a real treat for Lego mad kids. If you’re planning on heading there yourself, below are some useful links to help get your planning started. Hit us up in the comments or drop us an email if you need any further info, we’re always happy to help!

Legoland Billund Website
Lalandia Holiday Village & Water Park
Ryanair
Europcar Car Rental Billund
Visit Billund
Visit Ribe
Givskud Zoo

Our First Post!

Welcome to Buy The Ticket, our family adventure and travel blog where we'll be posting up our experiences as we drag our two crazy boys around the world with us.

We're an eight legged, half Hong Kong Chinese, half Welsh family, currently camped in the spectacular Welsh valleys, but always planning our next trip.

This year we're planning on visiting Dubai, as a short stopover stay on our way to Hong Kong, where we go annually to visit family. We've also got a four day trip around the beautiful north of Wales booked.

Ok, we're a little biased because we live here, but Wales really is a spectacular country to visit, and with 2016 tagged as Wales' Year of Adventure, what better time to head up north and kick start the adrenaline glands with activities like Zip World's mile long and 500ft high, 100mph zip line at Bethesda's Penrhyn Slate Quarry, or catching a wave at Surf Snowdonia, the world's first inland surf lagoon set in the shadow of the Snowdonia mountain range. And we know the kids are going to go mad for the Snowdonia Mountain Railway.

I case you're still not sold on Wales, check out Visit Wales' breathtaking Year of Adventure video below.

Our fellow parents out there know that when you've got kids biting at your ankles, you need to conjure as many everyday adventures as you can, so we'll be posting updates on those small excursions and budget friendly escapades as well. Sometimes jumping across streams can be just as fun as jumping on planes.

We'll also be posting up tales from our previous travel adventures, as well as sharing stories from our travel mad friends. We'll do our best to to give you all the details on each trip as well, in case you feel inspired to try it for yourself. If you want further info on any of our activities, you can drop us an email or comment under a post with your question. If we can help, we will.

So thanks for taking the time to visit our site. Follow us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or Pinterest to keep abreast of new posts, of which there are plenty to come!

Flo, Marcus, Kid X & Kid H.