The many (mis)Adventures of Sydney: I bought an elephant!

This morning the weather looked terrible and it really upset me because I was hoping and praying for a beautiful day in Copenhagen – especially since it’s our last port day here. Around 10:30, I met up with Steph, Cass & Chantelle and we headed out with two missions in mind: buy and elephant and see the Little Mermaid. Now that I’ve put those two ideas into writing, I realize how lofty those goals must sound, so just wait and I’ll get you an explanation by the end of this post.

Every other time we’ve been in Copenhagen, we’ve docked so far out that we have to purchase tickets to ride a shuttle bus into the center of town. Today, we were told that we were much closer and didn’t need the shuttle and that town was about a 10 minute walk. Not a single one of us had any clue or idea as to where we were or how to get into the center of town. We ventured out one end of the pier and walked for close to 30 minutes asking any random person how to get to Tivoli Gardens (the theme park where Walt Disney got his ideas). We found this sign along the way….I think it was a hair salon?!?!

Stephanie knew where the Elephant store was but she had to get to the center of town so that she could navigate her way to the proper location. About 40 minutes later, we arrived at the center of town and Stephanie knew exactly where we were. There was some type of religious hoopla happening where they had music and dancing – looked like lots of fun to be honest! All of the participants were wearing USA flags and jackets – so something in favor of the USA from what I could tell. Steph took us down this side road and warned us that the area seems a bit shady until we got to the other side where the bookstore containing the elephants was. We rounded the corner and sure enough, there was the elephant store and it was going to open in 10 minutes (we were concerned that it would be closed considering that it’s Sunday). Since we still had a few minutes until they opened, we decided we would go find lunch and walk a bit more. There was a Burger King, tons of Schwarma stands, Chinese food, crepes, ice cream, waffles – all sorts of good “fast” food. After walking in a few small restaurants and looking at the menus, we decided on the Chinese food stand right on the street. We all got a box of food where they throw a few different items in the box and continued walking around for a few more minutes until we finished.

As soon as I finished my Chinese, I was so excited about going to pick out my very own elephant! To give you a bit of background on this elephant situation… Around the city of Copenhagen, there are close to 100 elephants (probably about 5 feet tall) that artists have painted and they all have fun names. They are beautiful – all with a different message or theme from maps to Copenhagen, love, nature, flowers etc. They’re incredible and the purpose of these elephants is to raise awareness and funds for the health and rehabilitation of the elephants in Thailand. Copenhagen will have the “Elephant Parade” for another month or so and they will then auction off all of the large elephants around the city before starting a new one in Singapore (I believe). Here’s a couple that I found the first time I was here…

When I saw my first elephant back in June, I think- I fell in love. A guests had later told me that they sold replicas and I started my mission to purchase one before repositioning back to the states. The replicas are all hand painted and numbered and range in sizes from 4 centimeters to 20 centimeters and they even had some that were plain so that you could paint your own. I couldn’t afford the super large ones because even the smallest ones were close to 60US dollars. I bought the elephant named “Bouquet” and he’s 10 centimeters tall and I love him – he was one of the very few that was sitting down and his coloring and pattern really struck me – so I can’t wait to have a house to put him in!

We were so excited with our elephant purchases that we decided on dessert! Cass wanted something from the bakery. While she looked inside, we posed with our “We Save Elephants” bags…

The bakery was packed, so Cass came out empty handed, so we all decided on this little ice cream and crepe shop a few doors down. Chantelle and I were so excited about GOOD ice cream (we just don’t have the good stuff on board – which is probably a good thing!) and Cass got a crepe with Nutella and bananas. The only thing I can say is YUM!

We had accomplished one of our goals for the day and the other was on the way back “home”. We passed the coolest bike – had seats for 6 people and a table in the middle with champagne!

I said “hello” to the world’s tallest man and the worlds “largest” man ;) !

Kristin, the techspert on board, and her boyfriend Grahame were walking and we joined up with them for the long walk back to the ship. There was an Iron-Man triathlon going on throughout the entire city – we were weaving in and out of runners, bikers, divider tape and even getting in the middle of the course at times and getting yelled at in different languages! We finally ended up at the end of the triathlon course where there were some coca-cola representatives passing out small cans of coke and letting people take photos on surfboards (which are really difficult to balance on!).