“I chose to follow the sun, and the sun guided me past beautiful things. A castle, an angel, and a whole family of swans. Eventually she led me to the exact place I was looking for.” ~Me after a morning of wandering on 3 October 2018
I woke up Wednesday morning ready to start fresh with Copenhagen after a less than stellar first impression. It was cold & gray with random sporadic rain showers, but that had already been anticipated. My first stop: the Little Mermaid statue.
I got off the train and really had no idea where to go. I had wanted to use Google Maps, but it was kind of a nightmare. All of a sudden I looked up, and the sun was shining between two buildings. I threw my carefully planned out morning to the wind and decided to follow it. One of the things I had loved most about Paris was getting lost and stumbling upon random beautiful buildings, so why not do the same in Copenhagen?
It led me down beautiful side streets, past historical monuments, and along a river. All of a sudden I came upon a beautiful blue coffee shop that I had pinned pictures of…and I knew exactly where I was.
The sun had led me to right down the street of the Little Mermaid!
At this point, I pulled up Google Maps to make sure I was walking in the right direction, and took off to find her. As I walked I came across an entire family of swans. I had never seen “baby” swans before and holy crap they are huge!!! Like the size of a toddler huge!
After taking a million pictures of the swan family, I continued on to the Little Mermaid and got there at an absolutely perfect time. The sun was shining and there was no one around, so all of my pictures are tourist-free.
Everything I had read about this statue said that she is much smaller than you would imagine, but despite reading that over and over again…it still did not properly prepare me. I’m pretty sure the baby swans were bigger than that statue, and that is not an exaggeration.
The story of how she came to be the way that she is is actually really interesting. The artist had fallen in love with a dancer and her face is reflected in the mermaid. However, she did not want to pose nude so the body is actually of the artist’s wife. Weird, right?
Copenhagen had really pulled a 180 on me. From a horrible night to a sun-filled morning, I realized that I was in for a week filled with miracles and life lessons.
Lesson 1: Always follow the sun; it will lead you to beautiful places.
(Lesson 2: Copenhagen has the best pizza I’ve ever had…)