I know I typically write about journalism issues on this blog, so this entry will be a little different than what I normally post …
+++
I am currently in Europe with my family. We’re here on a mixture of business and vacation.
Most of our trip will be in Scandinavia, where I have been (and will be) speaking with newspaper folks across the region.
The trip began in Copenhagen, Denmark, where I got to meet with lots of great and interesting people. I also got a sneak peek at a very impressive multimedia storytelling project that will launch next week from a very unlikely source.
I’m going to try to blog about that next week. Fascinating stuff, and extremely well done.
But it hasn’t been all business. My family has been able to take in the sites, and just hang out with each other.
Plus, we got to visit Tivoli Gardens, which was a ton of fun for us!
My friends know that our family loves Disney and amusement parks, so Tivoli was a treat for us.
Tivoli was a heavy influence on Walt Disney when he started to build Disneyland. Tivoli is a great park — very different than any other park I’ve ever been to.
First off, it’s right in the middle of the city — the Copenhagen city hall is on one side, the main train station on one side, and a big Danish museum on another side. The city flows around Tivoli.
Most of the parks I’ve been to are definitely pretty far away from the main city.
I’m pretty sure I read somewhere that Tivoli has nearly 40 restaurants, and it definitely feels more like a park for adults then the parks I’ve been to in the United States — lots of beer and tobacco. And it seems like everyone smokes all the time and everywhere.
The entertainment also seems geared much more for an older audience. (Not dirty or anything like that. Mostly older styles of music — orchestras, swing bands, etc…)
But I still like the place a lot, and our kids loved it. It definitely has a lot of character.
Because Hans Christian Andersen is from Denmark, the park has a lot of references to the famous children’s story writer.
I can definitely see why Walt Disney liked Tivoli so much.
We’re currently on a train headed to Stockholm. The train has high-speed internet access, so my daughter (Jazmin) and I have been on our computers. (I love all the high-speed access over here!)
The view out the windows on this train trip has been amazing. Very beautiful.
Once we get in Stockholm, I have three days of meetings with lots of different newspaper folks around Sweden. (Each morning, I will begin by taking a train ride to where I’ll be.)
Then our family will be off to Paris for four days.
Yep, we’re going to take in all of the history and sites in Paris, but we’re also going to Disneyland Paris.
Like that’s a surprise to anyone who knows us!
🙂
+++
If you’d like to see the mostly blurry photos that I have taken on my camera phone while we were in Copenhagen, you can see them at my Facebook page.
Rob Curley 