Stockholm

Sunday afternoon was a car ride back to Maria's apartment, where she had invited Maribeth and I to stay for the night before our Monday flight back to Berlin. Maria has a cute apartment in Abrahamsberg, a popular place to live right outside of Stockholm City. But, she will only be living there a little while longer, as she has bought a new apartment in the same neighborhood.


[The living room and the two couches that we got to sleep on]

In the evening, we all just wanted to relax and hang out. Although we were clearly relaxing all weekend, we needed to take real showers, change clothes, and watch some movies. All of the above were very nice change from island life.

In the morning, Maria left early for work and left us to leave at our own pace. But, Natalie (my cousin Ludde's girlfriend) had warned that the door was very hard to open as she almost got stuck when water plants in the apartment.

When we got dressed and were totally ready to go, we realized that the door really was a problem. After about 30 minutes of trying to open then door, we started to look at other options. We thought that it would be easier to go around to the front door and open it from that side. Which meant one of us had to jump out the window.


[Me with the possible keys...]

After calling around to get Maria's cell phone number, calling Maria at work and almost having to make her come home, me jumping out the window, getting into the building, and trying all possible keys, we finally got the door open and got out! We had planned to leave at around 10, and an hour later, we were finally on our way.


[Maribeth thinking of alternatives to the front door]

When we got into the city, we locked our stuff up in the main train station (Annie - I learned something!) and then went to look at the "Statshuset" or the City Hall. This famous landmark is where the Nobel Prize banquet is held every year. It also provides spectacular views of the city.


[Maribeth and I on the water]


[The City Hall]

From there we continued to "Gamla Stan" or the old town. The buildings are old, but well taken care of and the streets wind around with little alleys in the medieval style. Here there are lots of cute shops, but also a lot of tourist traps and the like if post cards and souveniers are what you are looking for.


[Old Town]

We also passed by the castle, where the royal family doesn't actually live, but is quite impressive anyway.


[Maribeth posing in front of the castle]


[Maribeth with a guard. A first sight, some of them were women. We also missed the changing of the guard at noon because of our door mishap.]

Maribeth and I stopped to have a coffee at "Stortorget" or the big square.


[Although they might have been a little pricey, the location of the cafe (right on the square) and the quality of the coffee made it worth it!]

From there, we made our way over to the Vasa Museum, where the only 16th century war ship surviving today is housed. The Vasa ship sunk on it's maiden voyage in the Stockholm harbor only a couple of minutes after leaving the dock, and wasn't recovered until the later part of the 20th century from the bottom of the harbor. The museum is more to honor the amazing restoration of the ship after having been so long at the bottom of the harbor rather than the severely poorly-designed ship itself. A good museum to see if you have to do the speed tour like we did.


[Maribeth and I in the museum]

After the museum, we went and saw the King's Garden and walked past the Opera, but we really had to get back to the train station to get our bags, get to the bus station and made sure that we got a bus that would take us to the Skavsta Airport (about 1.5 hours away from Stockholm) so that we could make our 8:00 pm flight to Berlin.


[On our way! We are used to riding on buses together after Chile...]