September 12-13, 2023. The last post was about being gone for a long time. When I came back, I jumped wholeheartedly into hosting Sara, Andy, and their two little ones for several months while they settled into a new home. Over the summer, I started helping Randi’s son Avery get ready for college, and that culminated in a two week road trip to Utah to help him move in and start the semester. He did that, I came home, then 3 days later, I left for a trip to Scandinavia with Eric. We are currently in a cute, tiny hotel room in Copenhagen, preparing today to fly to Oslo to see our friends the Burts. This is my third trip to Europe this year, which seems unimaginable, but here I am.

We were originally going to spend a few days in Copenhagen, then take the train to Eric’s friend in Goteburg, Sweden, then go to Oslo. But, plans and availabilities changed and so we ended up with two afternoons in Copenhagen on each end of the trip since it wasn’t practical to pay the fees to change the flights. We flew out of BWI, which is so convenient and I’m so grateful. We stopped very briefly in Reykjavík to change planes and arrived in Copenhagen around midday. We took the metro to our hotel which was easy and inexpensive, then spent a really pleasant afternoon walking from our hotel over to the Little Mermaid statue and stopping to see whatever we wanted along the way. We went down streets that appealed to us , saw the mermaid, and had dinner in a nice restaurant by the water, then took the metro back to the hotel.

I’m not using instagram for this trip, so I’m going to try and write a bit every few days to record our doings. Being in a European city and having no plan for the afternoon felt wonderful. Usually, with thoughts about not wasting time and seeing all the important things, I would have a firm plan and a list of things to accomplish. Because of all the things on my mind lately, I just didn’t have time to manage planning in Copenhagen. So we took off from our hotel and walked. The Little Mermaid Statue was the most famous thing I could think of off the top of my head, so we got a rough idea of where it was and went…thataway. It was so relaxing! Copenhagen has colorful buildings, beautiful churches, and a pleasant, relaxed feel. It was a perfect weather day and my only disappointment was that my Birkenstocks, which I brought to be the main touring shoes, and which have never let me down, have worn down in the insole to the point where they were giving me blisters, which thing has never ever happened before. I have walked hundreds of miles in those things. So, I had to change into my trail runners, which did not go with my outfit AT ALL. But then I noticed that everyone in Copenhagen was wearing sneakers. With all kinds of outfits. So I went with it.

We happened into the Holmens Kirkegard, a beautiful cemetery on our way. It was a world apart, with treed avenues and individual gravesites planted with peonies, roses, boxwood and more. We walked through the Kastellet, an old, star-shaped fort that reminded me a bit of Fort McHenry, with peaceful paths along the moat, and a bridge through a portcullis to the inner buildings. Just beautiful. We are here after the main tourist season, so, while there were cruise ships in the harbor and a few tour groups walking about, it did not feel crowded at all.

Another thing this trip is that I’m mostly taking film photos. But I will take a few digital shots here and there to record the moments. Here are some from yesterday.

The first photos shows the buildings along the Lakes or Søerne in the city center. Next is one of the residential streets in Zone 20 along Østre Farimagsgade. I want to live on one of these streets. Third is a cemetery plot in Holmens Kirkegard, which is now my ideal for my own burial, and last is the iconic Little Mermaid, or Den Lille Havfrue.