Rebounding

All good things must come to an end. Similarly all garish, gaudy, endlessly-food-crammed things must come to an end too. And so it was that the MSC Orchestra made its stately way back into the port of Copenhagen, pausing only to blast its deafening, herald-of-the-apocalypse-loud horn at a tiny sailboat that came stupidly close to not getting out of its way. I’m pretty sure the Orchestra was in the right, but even if it wasn’t, I think that the natural rule of thumb is to always give way to a sixteen storey ocean-going skyscraper.





The Admiral and I bade goodbye to a couple of the crew with whom we’d been friendly, sobbed loudly at having to part with the buffet, and gave a gigantic meh to the rest of the passengers, then headed ashore. On the way back into central Copenhagen we thought it only proper to stop and see the Little Mermaid, Denmark’s most famous icon.


Zowie!





Actually that’s not the Little Mermaid. That’s the Big Mermaid, who doesn’t appear in any official tourist publications but is nevertheless an attraction. She’s carved out of granite rather than cast in bronze, but like her smaller sister she sits on the seafront and is admired by tourists. Or at least the male ones.


This is the Little Mermaid:





Or rather this is Admiral Ackbar, hogging the camera, as he has the entire trip. Not that you’re missing much: the Little Mermaid is under constant siege from several hundred Japanese tourists, dutifully snapping their obligatory pictures of her. Any photo of the Little Mermaid is really the Little Mermaid Plus Entourage.


Eventually the Admiral agreed to get out of the way, but not out of focus.





He’s quite a ham for someone made out of calamari.