The short version:  There was a mermaid who fell in love with a prince.  In order to marry him, she had to become human.  She decided to go for it, but transforming from an amphibian to a human takes time and, before she was human, the prince fell in love with another woman.  What a jerk!  On the other hand, what kind of sane prince would be hanging out with a mermaid?  But it’s a fairy tale, so we suspended belief and enjoyed the sight of the graceful and iconic statue of the Little Mermaid on the waterfront of Copenhagen.

From that fairy tale sculpture, we walked to the next one.  Again, the short version and my apologies because I don’t know mythology, so I don’t know the names of the gods and goddesses.  A goddess from Denmark wanted more land for tiny little Denmark, so she asked the god, who was in Sweden, to give her some.  The god told her she could have as much land as she could plow in one night.  Being a goddess, she turned her four sons into oxen and plowed enough land to add a significant amount to now-a-little-less-tiny Denmark.

Then it was on to the royal housing.  There are four arc-shaped buildings forming a circle in King’s Square.  The queen lives in one and the crown prince and his family live in another, putting the crown princess next door to her mother-in-law and the four kids next door to Grandma.  The crown prince’s family will move to the queen’s building when she dies.  I think the other two buildings house the parliament and offices.

The queen is much loved by the Danes.  She is a figurehead with even less Parliamentary power than Queen Elizabeth II, but she loves Denmark and her people.  She is 76, and the Danes are thrilled that she said she will continue to reign until she dies.  The crown prince and his wife are very popular and very much a part of Copenhagen life (it’s a small country).  They jog on the city paths, their kids go to the public school down the street, and the princess rides her bike to the school to bring the kids home each day.

In the center of the royal buildings is a statue of King Frederick II.  It is supposedly the finest equestrian sculpture ever designed.  King Frederick faces the cathedral, as is proper, since the king looks up only to God.  In truth, our guide told us, King Frederick II was a drunkard and could barely sit a horse, much less ride one.  He appears to be safely astride the horse in rigid sculpture form.

Copenhagen is a very green city.  Its goal is to be 100 percent carbon-neutral by 2025–just nine years from now.  To achieve this goal, the city has created many green park areas and rooftop gardens.  Bicycles are a popular form of transportation, reducing carbon emissions.  In front of one of the cathedrals is a sculpture representing a serious consequence of global warming.  Polar bears cannot hunt from land; they hunt from ice floes.  One result of global warming is the melting of the ice floes, thus reducing the polar bears’ ability to hunt and survive.

We went to the top of the bell tower in the cathedral behind the polar bear sculpture (you can see it in the picture above) for some beautiful overlooks of the city.

On our way back to the ship, we passed a car show.  We could have been in Anytown, USA on a summer afternoon.

Denmark has been ranked as the happiest country in the world, and it seems to be true, except at traffic lights.  Our tour guide gave us the Danish definition of a nanosecond:  it’s the time between when the traffic light turns green and the first horn honks.