Sad to leave Copenhagen / Travelling with Young Child musings

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I am struck by a kind of melancholy as we prepare to leave Copenhagen. Our CPH card runs out tomorrow at 2PM and by then we are likely to be on our way to the airport for a 5:05 flight to Bergen. I LOVE our hotel as it's become such a home to us, with its comfortable couch for hanging out on, cushy beds, friendly staff, amazing breakfast. I love Copenhagen and the ease of getting around, the balance of green space to city space, the number of pedestrian-only streets. I'm afraid we won't like Bergen, or Balestrand. I'm confident we'll love Iceland, but by then the trip will be nearly over. Part of me is also wondering if I might be homesick. I'm worried I'm making all the wrong choices and I don't know how to make things fun for my own kid. Was he spoiled by Disney World? Ireland was great last year but he seems less tolerant this year of non-kid stuff.

I have to be honest. It is really tough travelling with a kid sometimes. You see, you fantasize about it all year when you work at your dayjob, your kid is in all-day preschool, and you think you're going to spend two weeks together and it's going to be pure family time. You think it's going to be all bonding all the time. But you're not used to being around each other all day. He is used to being entertained by other kids, and you're used to being around adults (and being in charge a lot of the time, and having people listen to what you say). Some of it could be environmental. You're in a new environment, asking your kid to do things that are challenging, that are, in fact, challenging for you, like speaking another language, figuring out public transportation, staying in a place that's not your home. My son is a great traveller. He understands buses, airports, and trains - and he is now able to walk long distances (we're walking around 8-10 miles per day). He's actually quite mature for his age - it's only when he gets scared of silly things (like that the buried people in the church are going to come alive as skeletons) that we remember how young he is. He can be quite wonderful if well-rested and fed, and quite annoying without enough sleep, or if he hasn't eaten properly (as are we). And last night none of us slept well for some reason, and all three of us woke up with headaches.

The day started with fighting over food - which happens constantly - because the food here is so different, and we're expecting him to have real food before sweets, yet the sweets are all around him. To add to that, the real food isn't what he is used to - but he's digging in even more and even refusing to eat food he normally likes (yogurt, eggs, bacon). The thing is - food here is so expensive, that to not eat it, is a huge waste of money. I mean, breakfast for the three of us is around $70 per day. we've been filling up on it so as to reduce our food costs for the rest of the day, and then we are self-catering from grocery stores or having a snack out from a take-away. Anyway, all day long it's a fight about food, and since he can't have sweets until he eats real food, I have had to deprive myself. But today I was like "Look, we're getting to eat danishes in Denmark if it's the last thing we do" and probably one of the best moments of the day was sharing a trio of danishes while sitting out on the Nyhavn.

The next fight of course is always about buying stuff, not buying stuff - he's too young to have an allowance, which would make it easier. Instead, we gave him one chance to pick out a toy at the Lego store here, and then I bought him a t-shirt (really because I wanted to) with a viking on it. Knowing he can only have one toy per country (our rule) hasn't kept him from wanting to buy more toys and asking for them. He is good though if we say "We can go in but we're not going to buy anything."

Honestly it's not his fault that everything is twice as expensive here than it is at home, and it's the most expensive trip we've ever taken, but the costs do weigh us down mentally when it comes to wasting food or even when we might indulge him with a little gift, we can't.

Despite all the downsides, I have to believe that these experiences are good for him. Not only is he learning the obvious things - all about Vikings at the Viking ship museum, about animals at the zoo ... He is learning other things too - like how people in Denmark ride bikes instead of cars, how public transportation can be clean, fast, and safe, how to say Thank you in another language - why you would try to speak other languages. He's learning that people in different places eat different things, talk different ways, and have different customs. "Citizen of the World" kinda stuff. It's also good and nourishing to me too, in a way that travelling within my comfort zone is not.

Overall though, our best days here were spent at Tivoli, an amusement park, as well as the moments we shared at the Zoo. Essentially, the time we spent doing kid things that we could have done anywhere in the world. And it makes me think that perhaps instead indulging our (as a couple) passion for travel, we should indulge our love of our family and spend more time close to home. On the other hand, he does want to go to Japan and Sri Lanka - how could I say no to that?

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