Last week was the official autumn break for Danish schools, meaning that a lot of fun and family friendly activities were provided all over Denmark.
So we decided to take Friday off, pack up the family, and go to the Ebeltoft Applefestival. Ebeltoft is a lovely little town on the edge of Djursland (the part where my husband was born and raised), located at the seaside, on a hilly area, full of tiny little cobbler-stoned streets, charming houses, small craft- and artshops, giving home to the Glass Museum, and the Jylland Frigate, which is an old war ship from the 19th century, made into a museum. Ebeltoft is named after apples (æble in Danish), so it is not very surprising, that the city holds a festival dedicated to apples every autumn.
We really like to visit Ebeltoft, because it is simply beautiful there, and we like apples too, and the festival sounded fun, so we set out on Friday. It is about an hour of drive from here, and the closer we got to Ebeltoft, the more and more rain poured down on us… We really hoped that this tendency will stop very soon, because we obviously had our jackets on, but were not prepared for this kind of rain at all. As you can guess, the rain didn’t stop when we parked our car at the bottom of the city, next to the Frigate, so our first thing was to run into the nearest souvenir shop, and buy an umbrella. Now, being a little bit more rainproof, we began our walk in the city, to find the festival. Umbrella or no, we got soaking wet in no time, while following the signs leading to the festival. It was also lunch time, and the kids got whiny, so we entered the first grill place, had some sausage mix, warmed up a little, dried our jackets, and by the time we were done, the rain died down too. From that on it was only dripping, but hey, this is Denmark, so dripping rain is almost a default set-up.
Finally, after a few toddler tantrums from our sons part, and when we could see on each other’s faces with my husband, that we already truly regret coming here, we reached the premises of the festival, and things started to get better. First we spotted some candy apples, bought one for each kid, and it turned out to be the best decision ever, because the apples kept them occupied and happy for the rest of the day 🙂 Now, kids being taken care of, strolling happily beside us, holding our hands, licking the apples, we could really start to absorb the atmosphere and enjoy the festival. There were a lot of these red-striped tents, offering space for different crafts and goodies made of apples. Apple cakes, apple balls, apple juice, apple cider, you name it 🙂 There was also a huge tent housing all the talented craftsmen and -women of the area, it was a pleasure to see all of the nice things and get somewhat inspired by them.
Leaving this tent, we suddenly found ourselves staring at a little train. Obviously the kids, mainly our son, got very excited about it, so we went closer, and found out, that this little express is going around Ebeltoft, stopping at a few places. Since at this point we were quite far away from our parking car, kids getting tired, weather not getting better, we decided to jump on the little express, cuddle under some blankets, and get a ride 🙂 This also turned out to be a very good decision, children were super happy, and if they are happy, so are we 🙂 It was nice and warm under the blankets, and we didn’t have to walk, carrying the kids. Our little train choo-chooed around the city, between the cute little houses, and people were smiling at it wherever we went. We jumped off of it at the old town hall, went into some shops, then slowly walked back down to the parking lot.
All in all, it was a great day and a great experience. We might return next year… if it is not raining… 🙂
Poppy Goes Happy 