July 18, 2025
Kyle and I went for a morning walk in search of good coffee and pastry. We stopped at the highly recommended Prolog coffee and Juno the Bakery. 10/10 for both spots. We picked up an assortment from Juno to bring back and share.
At the apartment, the boys enjoyed some YouTube on Meme’s iPad but Len made sure his submarine was in eyesight at all times. We sampled nearly one of everything from Juno and the standout favorites were the lemon pound cake and the almond croissant.
All week, we had Friday pegged as the day that we’d visit Tivoli Gardens as the weather forecast looked incredible— sunny and in the 70s with zero percent chance of rain. We went down to the street to hop on our bikes to head to the park and found Meme’s bike was gone! It was locked next to my dad’s so the thieves must have had some heavy duty gear to swipe it. We figured we would deal with that later when we returned the bikes so we called my parents an Uber and made our way to Tivoli.
The boys were jacked up from the jump, especially when we measured their height and learned they’d be able to go on most rides. Walking into Tivoli Gardens, we knew right away it was not like any amusement park we’d been to before in the states. The grounds were impeccably kept, the park was incredibly clean and there were bar carts and drinks stands all over. There was also ample seating in shady spots so non-riders (me!) had a place to wait for their people.
We started with rides right away — by “we” I mean Kyle and the kids started on the rides while me and my parents looked for a good shaded place to sit. While on the swings, we saw Ollie’s hat fly off but I was able to run around and find it. Next was the double decker carousel that Len was excited about. Ollie had less enthusiasm for the carousel after he learned that there were no rings to collect as he went around and sat on his horse looking like he felt too cool to be there. Afterward, we got a huge popcorn snack that the boys plowed through with Len double fisting popcorn to get it into his mouth as quickly as possible.
Then it was Kyle’s turn to pick a ride and he chose the electric boats hoping that the kids might be able to ride solo without him. After seeing all of the boats driving in circles and struggling to get back to dock, though, Kyle knew they wouldn’t be able to handle it by themselves. Ollie kept talking a big game about riding by himself so when they got to the front of the line, they lied and said Ollie was 9 years old so he could take a boat out by himself. Ollie driving solo went as expected as he went in continuous circles for the first 5 minutes and then slowly got the hang of it after Kyle barked directions to him from the boat he shared with Len. Ollie wasn’t alone in struggling to steer his boat as we saw other adult-driven boats struggle to get back to the dock, too.
We took a break for lunch and ended up at an Italian spot inside the park. We were about to deal out the Uno cards as our food arrived so to Len’s dismay, we weren’t able to sneak in another game. After refueling we went to the nearby playground where Len found a submarine, his latest hyper-fixation.
Kyle worked with Len to practice standing tall with good posture to ensure he would be able to go on the big final ride of the day— a huge spinning ride that went high up in the air. The kids called it the “super duper mega twister” and their excitement to ride it helped assuage the disappointment over the hour long line to get on. While they were on the twister, I picked up a cotton candy for the kids to share to help distract them as we then had to leave the park to make sure we were able to return the bikes on time. Len was especially thrilled with the sweet treat and thanked me at least 5 times for the cotton candy as we walked out of the park.
Everyone was wiped after the afternoon at the amusement park so our plans to go out to dinner were soon scrapped for a final chill night at the apartment.
We are so excited to see our friends in Norway but sad to be parting ways with Meme and Papa. Thankfully we have our grandparent reunion already planned and we’ll be spending Christmas and New Year’s with both sets of grandparents in Hawaii :)
