The Little Mermaid

One of the things that the kids have been the most excited to see with coming to Denmark was The Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen. On Saturday, with nothing to do and temperatures set to be in the mid 40's, we decided to venture again into the city. We missed the bus and didn't want to wait for the next one, so we walked into the train station. Not really the best way to start the day, it's not a short walk and Lexi mumbled and whined pretty much the entire way. Oh well, things were better once we started on the train. Chad had decided to purchase a new bike, since the one he bought a few weeks ago was just too trashed to be reliable, so we picked that up first. Then, hopped onto the bus to take us to our destination. We had to change buses at one point, and since we were already on foot, we decided to look around a bit before catching the next bus. Glad we did, because we had stopped off right at the gates of Rosenborg Castle! We wandered around through the gardens for a bit and even watched the changing of the guards, albeit from a distance.
This castle was pretty cool, we were able to walk across the bridge, over the moat, right up to the castle. We walked around it taking a few pictures, but decided against a tour, since our main objective today was The Little Mermaid. Still, the castle was beautiful. It was built in 1606 as a summer house, going through some expansions until by 1624 it was at it's current condition. Wow, for the past 388 years, it's remained virtually unchanged! You can read more about it here.
We once again hopped on a bus and headed towards our destination. At our stop, we weren't sure where to go, but we saw a lot of people headed in one direction and figured that was our best bet. This course of action took us to Kastellet, also known as The Citadel. This was something I hadn't known about before, but was really neat!
Shaped in a pentagram, it's one of the best preserved fortifications in all of Europe. Basically, it's a military fort. It's kind of hard to explain what exactly it looks like, but I found an aerial picture online, so you can see it better. It's basically an island, with a raised hill all the way around. We entered through one of the gates, walked around for a while up on one of the hills and then exited through the other entrance. I wish we had walked all the way around to get a good view of the Windmill on the other side, but while we were on top, we noticed our destination! The Little Mermaid!

So, we headed down, passing this beautiful church! We passed several other statues, The Gefion Fountain - we'll definitely head back this way to see this in working order! We also walked down the Langelinie and passed by the Ivar Huitfeldt Column before coming upon The Little Mermaid statue. It's interesting that it's such an iconic tourist attraction in Copenhagen. The author of the Little Mermaid, Hans Christian Andersen, was from Denmark, so I think that's part of the reason it's so popular. Honestly, there are many more amazing sculptures we've seen that were much more eye-catching, but I guess in it's simplicity, the Little Mermaid statue was cool. It was hard to get a decent picture since there were so many people climbing on and around it. Needless to say, it was fun to see. After we left there, we came across this interesting statue - I think he looks like he's shaving his legs. And then we next passed by this awesome Angel statue. It was huge! I couldn't find out any information about it, bummer. I would have liked to have known more about it.

Look at all the flowers that are out!

Well, after leaving the area here by the ocean, we decided it was past time to get something to eat, so we headed into the Strøget area - the part of the city where there are no cars. It was super crowded, mostly due to construction in the area, but we were able to enjoy some hot roasted almonds and got a quick glimpse of the Round Tower. Another place on our list to go back to. After a quick box dinner of chicken curry, rice and noodles, we decided that everyone was ready to head home. It was a very fun day!