When we first moved here I made my list of priority travel. The top of the list has always been St. Petersburg, Russia and the Baltic region. I love the Russian Orthodox churches and wanted to see the Church of the Spilled Blood. We had to make this happen sometime in the next 3 years. We've been saving credit card points since the moment we got to Europe in order to earn enough in rewards to make a four person cruise in a balcony room affordable (due to the boys early bedtime schedule we knew we definitely needed a balcony so we could enjoy ourselves while they were sleeping.) The very large daycare bill I pay all school year helped to push that goal right along.  

I had been watching cruise deals websites for months when a military special came up. It was the correct cruise and the correct dates to correspond with my summer vacation. I called the company and, once my credit card rewards were calculated in, it fit nicely into the budget. The cruise left from Kiel, Germany on the north coast meaning we could drive there and we didn't have to worry about arranging flights or how much our baggage weighed after souvenirs. This caused me to pack WAY too much for the next 7 days.  

I had gone shopping for a nice new "cruise-ish" wardrobe before we left. Unfortunately the temperature was about 30 degrees cooler than I was expecting, so we had to pack long pants, sweaters, and rain gear on top of that.  

Our first stop was Copenhagen. We didn't book a tour and decided to explore this city ourselves. The trip didn't start off too well. We were wet and freezing when we got off the boat and weren't quite sure where we were going or how far away the tourist areas were from the port. Eventually we found a hop on/off bus stop and got on the next one (which ended up taking us all the way back to the cruise port before anywhere else because we got on it in the wrong direction).  

We eventually made our way to the Gefion Fountain, which depicts the Goddess Gefion who, according to the myth, created the area of Copenhagen. Here is the story: The powerful goddess Gefion was offered as much land in Sweden as she was able to plow during one day and one night by the Swedish King. To fulfill this task she turned her four sons into strong oxen’s. Gefion and the oxen’s did their job so well that they were able to create Zealand the Island where Copenhagen is situated. This great work left a huge hole in Sweden - where Lake Vanern is placed. On a map you will notice that the outline of Zealand matches the outline of Lake Vänern. 

 Then we walked through a square with the National Museum and Fredrick's Church. Unfortunately it was closed and we couldn't go in. So we strolled down the street to Nyhavn, which is a nice little neighborhood with a canal, restaurants, and shopping.  

 After another short ride on the bus we found Tivoli Gardens and the ever -so-loved Hard Rock Cafe! Of course, we stopped here for lunch and Ben bought a T-shirt. We walked down a pedestrian shopping street, where the boys just loved the statues of trolls with the viking hats so much that we had to buy them their own hats. I got Maddox's picture next to the troll at the same time as a group of Japanese tourists were walking by. They all stopped to take his picture and thought the boys were the cutest things (which they were).  

By this time the boys were getting a little tired, so we made our way to our last stop, the Little Mermaid Statue. I was really surprised at how many people were stopping to get a picture of this little statue and later found out it is one of the most photographed statue in the world. How did this statue come to be here? Well, in 1909 Brewer Carl Jacobsen attended a ballet called 'The Little Mermaid' which is based on Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tale. Deeply impressed, Carl Jacobsen asked a sculptor, Edvard Eriksen, to create a sculpture. The 4 ft tall Little Mermaid was unveiled at in 1913. Why does this little statue look so sad? Here is the big difference in Disney's version of the story and the true version. At the age of 15, the little mermaid breaks the surface of the sea for the very first time and falls in love with the prince she saved from drowning. In exchange for legs, she sells her voice to the evil sea witch - but sadly, she never gets her prince, but is transformed into deadly, cold sea foam instead. Very sad, indeed. 
  *Credit to the Copehagen tourism webpage for these two stories :)