Sweden!!

I love RyanAir. Well kindof. As far as airlines go, it's pretty awful. But you just can't beat a $70 round-trip fare to Stockholm!! So once again we boarded a train to Bratislava, then a plane to Stockholm (kind of). We actually flew into a small airport about an hour and a half from the actual Stockholm city center. It was so funny because it looked like RyanAir was the only airline that actually used that "airport." I say "airport" because it was more like a bunch of portables that were somehow fashioned together :) Even though we were so far away, it was actually kind of nice because we got to see so much of the countryside on our trip into town. The only bad part was being incredibly hung over from Matt and Shaun's birthdays the night before.

View of the Archipelago from the plane.

the "airport"

Beautiful swedish countryside :)

On the way we kept joking about spending a day at IKEA to get the "real" Swedish experience.

We arrived in Stockholm late-ish on Friday night and sat in the bus station trying to find our hotel (to the amusement of many Swedes) by trying to read everything out loud. We eventually realized that our hotel was in a place called Älvsjö. Luckily it was only about 10min away by commuter train. We really didn't care since it meant we weren't in yet another hostel. The hotel turned out to be really nice and we got a nice private room with a shared bathroom. Not to mention it was outfitted in almost all IKEA furniture :) The price was also right since we fit 4 people in a 2 person room. Hehe.


The next morning we got up super early and went out for a day on the town, trying to do as much free stuff as we could! Sweden's an expensive place. In restaurants a soda runs about $3 for one glass. Yeah. BUT they have ice cubes!! We couldn't believe our eyes when our coke and water came to us with ice in it. You don't understand how long it's been since any of us have seen ice. Like a million years, that's how long. It was great.

Sarah being amazed to see an ice cube.

Anyhow, back to the story. Oh yeah! It was kinda exciting that Swedish is similar to German. We could actually understand quite a few of the written billboards and ads. We felt so accomplished. I think I may have gotten on some people's nerves by speaking "swedish" all the time and trying to read the boards. We would walk down the street pretending to be Swedes. Our conversations went something like this: "Hinga dinga duuurgen ikea" "Oooh yeeeaahh u betcha!" Maybe you just had to be there.

Ok. Really back to the story. We first went to Gamla Stan, which is the old town island in Stockholm with the Royal Palace, Parliament, etc. It was like London with all of the soldiers that have to keep guard without showing emotion or anything. Except these guards had bayonets. We kept our distance. We went and watched the changing of the guard! It was really cool but also really funny. We all gathered in this big square and a bunch of soldiers marched in, did some other marching drills, and then the band came in on horseback and played marching songs. It was really funny watching these big guys trying to play the tuba on the back of a horse and still trying to control their horse. Very entertaining. The soldiers also did this really funny march/running away thing that made the whole audience laugh. It was definitely entertaining although it ran nearly a 1/2 hour long. We spent the rest of the morning walking around the island, looking at the bay and the ships, and looking at some random buildings.

Sofie and I on the bridge to Gamla Stan.

Entrance to Gamla Stan

Royal Palace

Royal Swedish Guard with a mean looking bayonet.

Changing of the guard

Horseback marching band!

I love the little alleyways in Euorpe! Not sure how these cars are going to get past each other though.

Royal Cathedral

Utilizing the panorama function on my camera

Next we decided to go to Djurgården, which is the large garden island by Stockholm. We walked all the way around the harbor to get there, but it was worth it. On the way I got a bug caught in my shirt and freaked out much to the amusement of Sarah, Sofie, and Myles. I was in the street, felt it, and immediately whipped off my shirt (i had a tank top on under it) and danced around trying to shake it out! Anyways, when we walked over the bridge to the island we saw a food vendor and got some Swedish meatballs (of course!). We were tempted to sample the local specialty "Super roll" which is two boiled hot dogs with mashed potatoes and shrimp salad all rolled into a tortilla. MMMmm right? Yeah...nobody ended up getting that.

The harbor

Super Roll!! Looks good huh?

Mmmm meatballs

The island was so pretty! There were trails everywhere and we walked along this pretty little river with flowers and trees everywhere. And the weather couldn't have been more perfect. It was about 75 degrees (25 centigrad?) without a cloud in the sky. We walked almost the whole length of the island. And we saw swans!! Turns out there are wild swans everywhere in Sweden. They were beautiful but kinda scary. The last thing I wanted was to be attacked by a giant killer swan. Anyways, we spent quite a bit of the afternoon walking around, sun bathing, and finding various places to stick our feet in the water.

Beautiful Tulips in the park

The island was scattered with private homes, restaurants, and museums along the water.

Swans!

View across the water towards the Museum.

I really wish we could have rented a boat :(

Bridge to the island

Outside the Theater

A little later we ventured back into town and Myles and I decided to go to the Absolut Icebar Stockholm. It's a year-round bar made completely out of ice. For $30 you get to go into the bar for 45 min, get a drink, and they give you these huge poncho type things with gloves so you don't freeze. It was a little over price, but Myles and I had lots of fun taking pictures, licking the walls, racing to see who could eat the most of their ice glass, and lots of other obnoxious things :)

Absolut Icebar Stockholm!

Pretty sweet huh?

I got the "Winter City" or something. It was blue.

Yep. The walls are ice too.

Me and Myles in our sweet outfits.

I definitely did not win the glass eating contest.

That was pretty much day one. We went back to the hotel late-ish, grabbed some chinese food to go, watched The Last of the Mohicans in swedish and went to bed.