Seek and ye shall find.

Our first night, we fell asleep around 9 but were both wide awake at 1, so we did some travelers chores until 3 . . . then slept until 10:00 the next morning! Mary was hungry, but we couldn’t find anything fitting her new no grain, no dairy diet that still had some protein to give her energy. While we were searching, we managed to pass some of the sights that we wanted to see. So the title of this entry is "seek and ye shall find." But not always find what ye seek.

We finally landed at a restaurant call Le Coin for Smorrebrod. (BTW: interesting to me how a word that means "butter and bread" and in fact is a petite open-faced sandwich came to imply in English a vast array of food: smorgasboard.) Mary got chicken salad (and, yes, gave me her buttered bread); I got salmon.

Their sign seems to go from ancient history to present: traditional food (Smorrebord) to restaurant twitter feed (#lecoin).

We struck up a conversation with our server, who turned out to be a 22-year old from L.A. studying Danish and seeing how she liked it here. Her name is Jackie, and we swapped e-mail addresses and hope to see her at the end of our trip when we return to Copenhagen to catch our return flight. There seems to be a rapport among those who love travel and/or have spent time in foreign countries.

The next thing we sought was the controversial "I am Queen Mary" statue. It portrays Mary Thomas, who led an uprising against the Danish on the Caribbean island St. Croix. But along the way we wandered through Sankt Anna Plaza, with people walking their dogs in the gardens among the "no dogs allowed" signs. 

And we found Amelienborg palace, the Danish queen's winter home. 

Just down the street was Frederick's church, which I didn't know would be there. 

Out back of Amelienborg, we saw this building across the river: the opera house.

There was also a coffee cart serving coffee with some sort of side car or rocket ship beside it.

We finally found the statue. 

I like to think of my wife as thinking, "I am Queen Mary."

Then we went to see another famous statue. You all know the one: the little mermaid.

Oops, that is the genetically modified little mermaid, a parody a few hundred meters away. Here is the little mermaid. Again, a controversial statue because it showed her with two tails.

After all that walking, it was time to enjoy one of the pleasures of a country not founded by  Puritans: street drinking!

Then we went back for a brief nap that turned into a long one, and we awoke at 6:30 needing dinner. My nephew had told us about a brewery here that had a business partnership with his favorite brewery: Three Floyds in Muncie, Indiana (globalization can make for unlikely associations). We went to its neighborhood, the former meatpacking district, and looked for a restaurant. Many were filled or offering food we were not interested in, and we were very hungry after our light lunch and long walking day. We passed a Turkish restaurant, Mangal, that hadn't shown up on my Google searches, but had good healthy options for reasonable prices (Copenhagen dining out is notoriously pricey). The service was some of the best we've had in Copenhagen, and the salmon fillet I ordered melted in my mouth.

Then we finally got to the brewpub my nephew sent us to: War Pigs.

Named after the song by heavy metal band Black Sabbath, the pub blasts heavy metal music. I ordered a Rain of Terror, and Mary got a Big Drunk Baby. No, that wasn't me after the beer, that was the name of her beer. Both were excellent, and if you can stand that kind of music, I highly recommend the place.

Then we went back to our hotel and fell fast asleep, hoping to get an earlier start the next day. But the 11.5 miles we walked that day and/or jet lag seemed to have taken their toll because we woke up at 11:00 the next day.