Exploring beautiful Copenhagen on a quest to find a mermaid -- 7/29/17

We took an early flight from Dublin to Copenhagen and arrived to rainy skies.  We rode the Metro (subway) to the Kongens Nytorv stop and walked about 5 minutes to our apartment home for the next few days.  After getting settled in, we headed out for lunch and to explore a bit of Copenhagen.  The rain stopped and the skies began to clear as we walked to the Nyhavn harbor area.  Words really can't describe the beauty of this city.

Jack found a huge anchor to climb on, and he gave out a big "Ahoy there" shout, which was his camp greeting this summer at Camp Sea Gull.

Here is another view of the harbor with a bridge in the background.  

The Copenhagen Opera House is directly across the harbor from Nyhavn.

The Little Mermaid sculpture in Copenhagen harbor is one of the must-see sights.  It was created in 1913 to commemorate the fairy tale author, Hans Christian Andersen, as he lived most of his life in Copenhagen.  I knew it was in the harbor, but I just didn't know where.  After much walking, we finally found it on a map, and it looked like we just had to keep walking North around the harbor.  On our quest, we discovered Amaliehaven, a beautiful garden near Amalienborg and Frederiksstaden, which is the royal compound, for lack of a better term.  There are multiple palaces on one central square.  It is still home to the Royal Family.  

(You can see the Opera House across the harbor in the background.)  The other end of the square faces Frederikskirken.  Its dome is one of the largest in Europe and is modeled after St. Peter's in Rome.

Still no mermaid to be seen, so we kept walking....and walking.  Everyone once in a while, I would ask someone.  Most people would say, "We are trying to find it, too."  I did have one man finally point us in the right direction after he heard me say "Where is this blasted mermaid?!?" He said, "I understand.  We finally found it a while ago."  He had the same defeated look on his face as all of our fellow mermaid seekers.  We finally found tour buses and hoards of tourists, which meant we were in the right spot.  Here is The Little Mermaid sculpture.  It was a little like finally seeing the Mona Lisa -- much smaller than we expected and surrounded by people. At least, we can check that off of the list.

We hiked back to the apartment to have a little downtime after our early flight.  A few hours later, we decided to head across the harbor to the same side as the Opera House.  Here is the view from the bridge.

Dan read about Copenhagen Street Food, which is a huge food hall with lots of different food trucks inside of a warehouse.  It sounded interesting, so we thought we would give it a try.  The place was packed with people.  It was awesome!  Here was my dinner from the French food truck.  In case you were wondering, those are frites fried in duck fat.  I shared with all of the kids.  They were so delicious.  The kids didn't want any of my pate or cornichons or green beans.  Imagine, that.

Dan took lots of pictures inside the food hall, because it was such an interesting concept.  Maybe one of those empty furniture plants in Lexington could sustain a miniature version.

Jack and Hadley wanted in on a picture from the balcony of the food hall.

After dinner, we enjoyed some dessert outside of the food hall.  They had chairs lined up right on the harbor, so we enjoyed the beautiful evening.  (It was still somewhat light outside at almost 10:00 PM.)

 Here are a few pics of the surrounding view.

They also had a small playground made of seagull sculptures.  Maybe it wasn't intended to be a playground, but plenty of kids were using it as such.  One of the seagulls even had a slide down its back, so I am assuming the sculptures serve a dual purpose.  

We returned home to the apartment, and I knew that I needed to tackle some laundry.  Only one problem...the washing machine was in Danish.

After about 30 minutes with Google translate, I finally figured it out and had the first load of laundry in to wash.  Tomorrow, I will tackle translating the dryer...Stay tuned!