COPE-enhagen, Part the Second

Not only did we manage to make it to almost everything on the list, but we were greeted with smiles and open arms wherever we went.  As a new mom, I carry around this slightly irrational fear of THE PUBLIC SCENE, a nightmare scenario in which I take the baby out, he starts crying his fool head off, and I incur the wrath of dirty looks or worse from strangers who jab their steely gazes right down to the heart of my deepest insecurity, which is that I don't know what I'm doing most of the time.  In all honesty, Little P is a gem for the most part, but you just never know when the screaming will start.

But instead of fleeing in horror at my potentially peace-disrupting bundle of cuteness, complete strangers actually made a beeline for him, tugging on his delicious baby feet and cooing at him in Danish.  Even grown men would bend down with gooey eyes and high-pitched voices to offer him a finger, which he was only too happy to repay with one of his pure-joy-radiating, gummy smiles.  If it's one thing that makes my heart melt it's grown men making goo goo noises.  Gets me every time.

The tensest moment for me came on our visit to Rosenborg Castle, home of the Danish crown jewels,  because there are serious museum-goers out there, people.  Museum-goers who buy the audio guides and actually want to listen to the muffled voice coming out of the plastic box telling them in excruciating detail about the mathematical phenomenon of the stained glass windows.  Museum-goers who linger for inordinate amounts of time over cases of ancient Roman lead tablets in a vain attempt to put their four years of high school Latin to good use uninterrupted.  I know, I used to be one of those museum-goers.

So it was with a little trepidation that we entered the heavily fortified portals of the treasury room.