Stockholm, Sweden

I know I'm several weeks late on this, but better late than never. I hope I can remember enough details to tell you about the trip, becaues so much has happened since then.

We took a four day weekend to Stockholm. We didn't fly out until late Friday evening, so that gave us a day to sleep in and get a few much needed things accomplished. Once we landed, we had to take an 80 minute bus ride into town from the airport. Thankfully our hotel was just around the block from where we were dropped off. By this time, it was already 10:00, if not later. We ate supper quick and then fell fast asleep.

Saturday morning we headed out early. It was an absolutely beautiful day outside and we didn't want to miss it. Our first thing was to get on a boat and tour the thousands of islands that help make up Stockholm. There are around 8o,000 islands total, but 30,000 of them are included in the city of Stockholm. We had a wonderful hour and a half boat ride out and around the islands. It was quite chilly out, but we were bundled up in our coats, hats, and gloves.

The boat we rode on.

After that, we went to the Royal Palace. The building was massive. We then spent some time walking around downtown and looking at all the shops. We stopped for tacos and ice cream. Not very Swedish, but it worked for us. To end the day, we went to the Vasa Museum. The Vasa is a navy ship that sunk after leaving the dock, about 200 yards out. It really didn't even make it out of the port. They eventually dug the ship out and it is not on display in this museum. It was huge and so neat to see. We closed out the place at 5:00 and spend the rest of the evening just walking around. Because all of the stores and tourism places are on their winter hours, most things closed at 5:00. That didn't leave us much to do for the evening. We can back to the hotel at a good time and got a good night's rest!!

On Sunday morning, we headed back to the downtown area. There were some things that we wanted to see that we missed on Saturday. We saw the changing of the guards and the band at the palace. We checked out a really neat cathedral and we also looked at a couple of buildings that had a historical story behind them. We also went to see the US Embassy. This has become a tradition for us. We have seen almost every country's embassy so far.

For supper, we wanted to have traditional Swedish meatballs. Unfortunately, that weren't easy to find. We tried many restaurants and couldn't find them. We did have a name of a restaurant, but it was a long ways out and was rather expensive, so we were trying to avoid it. But we finally gave in, because we had already spend a couple of hours looking for another place. So, we hiked on our to this place. Probably about three miles later we finally came upon it, thanks to our GPS and her pedestrian mode. We walked in and were told they were fully booked for the night. Crushed!!! We went back outside and wondered what else we could do to get those meatballs. We walked about a block away and Jay wondered if they would make us a plate for take away. We thought we could sit on the bench in the bus stop and eat them. So, we walked back to the restaurant and Jay went in to ask. The guy seating people got a good kick out of this. I stook outside and waited, so only Jay looked like the goofy one! The guy seating people went to talk to the manager. He came back saying he will put us at two seats in the bar area. Jay said he had to go get his wife, that I was standing outside. The guy said he would come get me. He opened the door and said get in, we'll put you in the bar. We ended up sitting in two cooshy chairs and eating off the end table. I felt rather strange as this was a pretty fancy place, but that's life. At least we got our Swedish meatballs! The guy asked if we wanted a taxi to get back into the city. We laughed and said we walked the whole way there, we could walk all the back. I would love to know his impression of us, because I bet it's pretty funny!

That night, we went into an ice bar. The place was completely made out of ice and the drinks were served in glasses made out of ice. We went in, looked around, used other people's glasses to take a picture, and headed back home.

We were up by 3:30 on Monday morning to catch the bus and head back to the airport. We has a 6:00 flight to hit.

It was a great trip up north. The leaves were beautiful, the weather was beautiful, and we had such a great time together!