Stockholm

We’re pressed for time but as long as the bus is on time we will make the flight… Unfortunately we didn’t account for the snow that fell last night, the bus is late, we get stuck in traffic and miss checking our bags by 5 minutes. 5 minutes!! There is nothing we can do but to change flights, the earliest is the next day flying from Warsaw so it’s a day of train travel for us.  Arriving in Warsaw we’re tired but the hostel is easy to find and right opposite a Tequila bar so we can treat ourselves to some Mexican food to cheer us up. Early to bed, early to rise.

We get to the airport nice and early, we’re not pushing our luck again. Once there we are reminded why we dislike Wizz Air; grumpy staff, long waits and no allocated seats.  We miss Norwegian Air and SAS. 

Arriving in Stockholm we meet our host Henrik and he introduces us to his children and their friends. The girls giggle and run away and the boys hide behind their computers. Henrik is really welcoming, we have a good chat with and he makes us some food. He is surprised that we are travelling around Europe and not Thailand and looking out of the window we realise why, so much snow! This is going to be a cold few days. It’s the evening and Liverpool are playing so we find the cheapest pub in the city to settle in and watch the match (and of course James manages to get us lost on the way!). Back at the flat we cook some food and the little girls giggle their way in to get a drink and then tease each other by pushing each other towards the stinky English, heehee! Christine nearly gets caught playing with the children's toys.

The view from our room

Christine must resist the awesome Troll game!!!

Getting up early to make the most of our day we have breakfast with Henrik and try Swedish crisp bread, very nice with cheese, yum. Henrik points out a pretty route into town for us to take and we set off passing lovely houses and crossing the river over huge bridges to get to our first destination, the Vasa Museum. The Vasa was a ship that sank 20 minutes into its first voyage and then left at the bottom of the sea until 200 years later when it was recovered and restored. The museum is built around the ship which is huge but you can’t actually go onto the ship itself so we explored the 7 floors that surround it. We get to listen to an English tour of the ship and our guide tells us that if only the ship had been made just 1.5m wider it wouldn’t have sank. This fact was pointed out to the Admirals at the time but they didn’t want to listen, they were just too eager to show off their massive ship to the world. Fools. The museum even has the skeletons of the people who died on the ship, awww. 

Brrrr, I'm cold just looking at the photo.

 

The Vasa

The Vasa

The Vasa

Boom!!

James meets a long lost relative.

We spent a few hours at the museum before walking along the river, through the center and across the bridge to the island with the Old Town. The Old Town is pretty but small so it doesn’t take us long to walk around it. We pass the Royal Palace which is one of the largest royal palaces in the world still in use for its original purpose and try to sneak a look inside but surprise, surprise there’s a ticket office. It’s getting dark, we are cold and haven’t eaten since breakfast (stupidly expensive food!) so we find something to eat before going back to warm up and pack for tomorrow. Macedonia next! 

The gate to the old town.

Pretty buildings

There we are!

The Royal Palace.

A posh urinal.