København = COO bin ha in = Copenhagen

I hadn't planned on anyone eating breakfast before we left, because it was so early. But as I made a pot of coffee, Cristina, Alex, and Bella all came to the kitchen hungry. So they had some toast. We loaded up our cooler, gave hugs, and hit the road. As I pulled out of the driveway, the clock said 7:35. We were on target for getting to the dragon fountain at the center of Copenhagen by 10:30.

Our last trip across the $42 bridge was notable for the majestic wall of clouds. It looked like we were crossing a bridge into Heaven!

We only stopped once, for a bathroom break. We made good time on the road and I dropped off the family at the dragon fountain right at 10:30. The plan was for me to then drive to the parking garage I had scouted out online, park, then walk to the dragon fountain by 11. I had printed out google maps directions from the dragon fountain to the parking garage.

Then I hit a snag.

The streets in Copenhagen are not labeled very clearly. The street names are (sometimes) on the sides of buildings on the corners of intersections. Some buildings, but not all. And some corners, but not all. They can be hard to spot, even if you're not also trying to navigate Copenhagen traffic from behind the wheel. So I couldn't find the very first street I needed to be on. And to add to the difficulties, the car was so packed that I had no visibility out the back window, so I really didn't want to get into tight spots where I needed to make 3-point turns to backtrack. I finally circled around enough scanning for street signs to find the street that I needed. But by this point, I didn't know where I was on that street in relation to the next street I needed. So I'd drive as slowly as possible looking for the next street. If I felt like I had gone too far, I'd turn around and go back the other way until I found it. This continued from Vesterbrogade to the oh-so-memorable (and my personal favorite) Oehlenschlægersgade to Matthæusgade, where I finally found my parking garage right at 11. I texted Cristina and told them to go with the tour and I would catch up.

It took me another ten minutes to figure out the parking ticket machine. It had a button for English, which translated the welcome screen, but then as I put my MasterCard in, it reverted to Danish. There was no one around to help, so I used my phone to translate the message it gave me (which told me there was a problem with my card and to retry). The good news is this parking garage only cost 11 dkk an hour (about $2) which is cheap parking for Copenhagen. I started walking to meet the family.

I asked a couple of times to make sure I was going the right way on the way to the dragon fountain. Ironically, I was stopped by a couple of tourists who asked me for directions to a grocery store. I just happened to have passed a Lidl, so I could actually tell them how to get there. Small victory.

I think I got to the dragon fountain around 11:45. Cristina had been sending me texts of where they were with the tour, and I used the tourist map near the dragon fountain, as well as the notoriously unreliable google maps app on my phone, to chase after them. Once, when I finally got to Højbro Plads, where they were, Cristina sent another message saying they were now at Kongens Nytorv. When I looked that up on my phone it looked so far! I wondered if I was going to spend the whole tour one step behind them. But they stopped for a break at Kongens Nytorv, and I caught up with them there.

The second half of the walking tour was nice. The guide spoke loudly and broke up the walking with enough interesting tidbits to make it meaningful but not too talky. And it was easy enough to take pictures during the walk without feeling rude.

 I found the kids where anyone would expect to find their kids. In a pub.

 Hans Christian Andersen's home. He wasn't in.

 The iconic Nyhavn (pronounced "New Haven" in English, or "new ha in" in Danish). Perhaps the other most recognizable part of Copenhagen (along with the Little Mermaid statue). This used to be the red light district of Copenhagen, but the Beatles never played here. :)

 At the harbor. The opera house is in the background on the right, and on the left (the farthest building away) is the world headquarters of shipping giant Maersk.

 Opera house. Like any modern building built in the midst of very old architecture, some love it, some hate it.

 In front of the Queen's residence. Danes take pride in how close their royalty are to the common people. We could literally walk right up to the front of her palace, and the plaza in front is a working roundabout.

We were late getting back to the car (long walk) but we didn't get a ticket or anything.

 Since we had no other plans, we drove to the Little Mermaid statue for a picnic lunch (in the same park where I took a selfie a week ago). The forecast had said only a 10% chance of rain, and that 10% happened during our lunch. The lunch was a little bit of a disaster. I cut my thumb while slicing a tomato and dropped the tomato on the ground. Cristina dropped the goat's cheese she was cutting. The kids didn't like the dark bread we bought. The kids argued and picked at each other. And it was raining. I thought about all the people who, when they heard about our summer plans, asked if we'd kill each other by the end of the trip.

But then the rain stopped and attitudes improved. Mermaid time. I tried to position myself so that the tourists were mostly hidden behind the kids, and then the tour boat floated into the shot. Good grief, I give up.

 Just me and my international friends, hanging with the mermaid. Carlsberg beer tycoon Carl Jacobsen commissioned the statue, which was completed in 1913. It's been a big tourist draw ever since. Carl wanted ballerina Ellen Price to model for the sculpture, but she didn't want to pose nude, so the sculpter, Edvard Eriksen, used his wife, Eline, as a model for the body. (The head is Ellen Price.)

I was really drowsy after lunch, and should have gotten a cup of coffee, but I didn't feel like stopping, so on we went. We made it to Nykøbing and Trine's house by 8 pm.

 Some Danish coins have a hole in the middle. Alex put a bunch of them on a string, just because.

Trine left this mini Danish graduation cap for Sofia. It came from a teddy bear.

I was so exhausted, I didn't want to unpack or do anything. But we did unload the car, we met Pi, the next door neighbor, and we parked the car across the street at another neighbor's house (instead of on the street, where drunks can sometimes bump your car). Cristina and I walked down to the Kiwi grocery store to get a few items. We made soup for dinner.