Since the team had the weekend off from games, Elise and I decided to go play the part of tourists in Stockholm. We hopped on an early train Saturday morning and made our way to the largest city in Sweden :). Once we arrived in Stockholm Central, we made our way to the hotel our wonderful teammate Annelie helped us reserve at an AWESOME rate (thanks buddy!!!) only to find out we wouldn't be able to check in for another hour or so. While it stunk having to tote our bags, we decided that this would be a perfect time to find the Absolute Ice Bar where we had reservations for that night. Turns out, it was literally right behind the hotel we were staying in and in another hotel. While we were there, we asked the concierge desk about archipelago tours we had read about online. After we had gotten everything straight there, we still had about half an hour to kill before we could check into our room and drop our stuff off. Not wanting any time to go to waste, we walked about a block away from our hotel and took some time to sit in a park my mom and I had found while we were lost in the city during our visit. Being as it was incredibly hot, we didn't sit there for long haha! We made it back to the hotel right and thankfully they let us check in an hour early :)!
After we had dropped off our stuff, we decided that we should locate the dock where our boat tour the following morning would depart. We started off by taking a walk along the canal toward Gamla Stan (Old Town Stockholm). Before we crossed the bridge into Old Town, we took the opportunity to walk around within Stockholm's City Hall. The last time I visited, it was not open to the public. I am so thankful that it was this time! It was absolutely gorgeous inside. The old architecture mixed with the open air courtyard in the center of the building combined with the breathtaking view of Stockholm made this place AMAZING! Of course, we couldn't resist the photo ops! Once we had finished playing tourist here, we continued our walk toward Old Town. on the way, we stopped at a kiosk for the tour we wanted to take. We were told to venture to another dock since that's where our particular boat was going to take off from. It was right next to the Royal Palace so that worked out great since the next stop on our tour was the Royal Palace!
After we had taken in the sights of the Royal Palace and walked through some of the smaller streets surrounding, we wandered over to kiosk #2. The people here told us that we ACTUALLY wanted another dock and directed us there. It was actually very nice. Every person we were talking to about this tour was more helpful and informative than the last. We were getting a ton of information and a number of options! On our adventure, we got to see a part of Stockholm I hadn't seen before. The 3rd and final kiosk (the place where our boat was actually leaving from) was on a harbor behind all of the gorgeous hotels that overlook the palace. Even though we were probably still in a very touristy part of town, I felt as though it was a bit more residential since there seemed to be more apartment buildings and less hotels. It was incredibly beautiful! Finally, we had booked our boat tour and were free to do some more exploring.
On our way back to the hotel, we saw some sort of festival going on. Not wanting to miss anything, we ventured over to it. It turns out, it was the Stockholm Street Festival! Wow, we have been so lucky with our trips! First we see a commemorative ceremony in Göteborg and now we wander into the Stockholm Street Festival? AWESOME! When we walked up, there was a street act in progress. I think we missed something, because when we showed up all we saw were two British guys in British flag Speedos, top hats, socks, and sock straps. They were doing acrobatic maneuvers, so clearly clothing just wasn't an option HAHA! We took some time to walk around and take a look at what the vendors were offering. To be honest, there wasn't hardly any Swedish vendors and there really weren't that many. I would have imagined this event would be much larger than it really was. Nonetheless, it was very cool to experience:). On our way out of the festival, we did notice something VERY American. Ok we've seen McDonald's, Burger King, even a Pizza Hut, but this one rules all: TGIFRIDAY'S!!!! haha I couldn't believe it... It was hilarious!
That afternoon, one of our friends Jonna, from the Söder softball team, met up with us in town and had fika with us! It was so nice to see her again and so nice of her to come into town just to see us! I had a delicious chocolate cake that I can totally pronounce thanks to Jonna, but unfortunately cannot spell so that may be something I need to learn haha! We just sat and talked and took it easy and chatted until we needed to head back to the hotel to get ready for the night.
After nearly 4 h
ours of walking around almost nonstop, we were feeling it, but this was no time to quit. We had to hustle back to the hotel so we could shower and get ready for the evening. As I mentioned before, we had reservations at the Absolute Ice Bar: Stockholm. This was the very first ice bar in the WORLD... yeeeeh I said it! haha. Also, for those who may not know, Absolute Vodka (the bar's namesake) is actually a Swedish export-- perhaps the reason this was the very First ice bar (actually I'm willing to bet on that one :P) It was a really neat experience!!! When you go in, they first suit you up in a cloak type thing that has a hood and gloves attached. Next, they admit you to this room that leads to the Ice Bar. Since it has to stay -5C, the door to the actual bar will not open until the door to the cloak room closes. It was a little unnerving to be in a room with neither doors opening, I'll admit haha! Once we got in, it was BEAUTIFUL! It was an aquatic themed ice bar so all of the ice had back lights in different hues of blue :). There were even sea creatures cut and etched into the ice from the back so they appeared to simply be floating in the ice! Also very cool, the bar itself was made of ice as were the cups they gave you your drinks in! The Ice Bar experience actually came with a drink included so after taking some initial photos, we took a look at the drink menu and ordered our drinks. I ordered something I had never heard of before figuring that I'd only experience this once and why not give it a shot? Yeh, no. If you ever see gooseberries in a drink, it's not great lol! What in the world are gooseberries anyways? I thought it would be a flavor. No, it looked like something they just picked from the forest or something HAHA! I'm pretty sure it might have been the strongest drink in the bar. It was basically just vodka and these berry things. Oh well, got my money's worth lol!!!! It was very cool because they allowed us to go in early and we stayed in the Ice bar during the period where they normally shift people in and out. For like 3 minutes, we were the only ones in the bar. We opted to take advantage of this and take some ridiculous photos of course HAHA! :) After 40 minutes, we were chilled and decided to leave. Walking outside was amazing. To everyone else, it was humid and incredibly hot. To us, it was PERFECT! We headed back up to the room to change into our flip flops and out of some of our warmer clothes (that's right, we went prepared-ish!).For dinner that night, we went to this really good Chinese restaurant. I don't know that I've ever had chicken and cashews quite like this. The sauce that was on the dish was spectacular! Oh and the veggies that accompanied were so delicious! While it was no Kin's Wok, it was very good :). After dinner, one of Elise's friends who is doing an internship in Stockholm over the summer met up with us at the restaurant. From there, the three of us started walking toward a low key wine bar. Twenty minutes into our walk, we figure out that we've actually been walking in the exact opposite direction this whole time haha!!! Apparently Blackberry maps are about as good as Mapquest... aka not great at all lol! Anywho, we hopped in a cab and wound up at the right place. It was this outdoor bar that was apparently an affiliate of a larger bar just some doors away. We sat here for a good while just sipping on a delicious white wine and just chatting. It was so relaxing and exactly what we needed. After we were done there, we walked back to our hotel, dropped off some of our things, and then walked around Stockholm for about an hour just taking in scenes of the nightlife. It was a great day!
when we woke up bright and early the next morning, we had several things to do. We had to get ready for the day, eat breakfast (the spread at the continental breakfast was UNBELIEVABLE! everything you can imagine... no really!), check out, go to the train station and put our bags in a locker so we wouldn't have to carry them around all day, and get to our boat. We did all of that with plenty of time to spare. We made it to our dock about 50 minutes before departure time.
The tour was simply breathtaking. We saw so many islands and hear so many stories about several of them, not to mention the houses on the shore! They were HUGE! The tour itself took about 3 hours and featured Vaxholm, a fortress from the 1500s designed to protect Sweden from any intruders (unfortunately, by the time it was completed, it was already out of date). If you wanted to, you could get off at the fortress and walk around. Since we'd have to change boats to return, we just opted to stay on the boat and enjoy the tour... most everyone else did too. Since we were kind of worrying about our luggage the whole day (since neither of us had ever used a public locker before) we decided to go ahead and pick it up after we got off the tour. We only had about 4 hours before our train left and it wasn't like we were going to be doing too much walking anyways so we went ahead and got or luggage from the locker.
Elise and I had a fika of our own at a small eatery not far from where we had fika the day before with Jonna. I wanted to try and do a bit of shopping while I could since I'm having such a hard time finding gifts for people (HINT HINT! I need ideas folks! :P). Since Elise's feet were hurting her so badly, she offered to stay with the bags and sit in the square while I went looking. I walked up and down some of the roads lined with tourist shops ducking in and out of every single one of them looking for gifts for my family. NOTHING! I couldn't find anything that I wanted to give them. An hour and some change later, I met back up with Elise and we headed to the train station to catch our ride home. It might have beent he most miserable train ride ever. It was one of the hottest days to date this summer in Sweden and we were on an intercity (the slow one) train for 4 hours with no AC. I think the fact that we were already exhausted just exacerbated the situation. It was miserable. However, the fact that we had such a great time in Stockholm totally overpowered however terrible that train ride was. It was so nice to get away even if it was just for a few days :)
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