Stockholm, Sweden

Another weekend get away... August 6-8, 2010

So after chatting with Flavor Flav and his entourage about hats and world events Mike and I caught our British Airways flight to Stockholm.

Swedes love reindeer...

We arrived, got in the taxi...to later find out the taxi driver had no idea where our hotel was and spoke very little English.  However, he did know more English than we knew Swedish...

We finally arrive at Hotel Skeppsholmen, get the key to Room 135, enter our less than 200 sq. ft. room...unload and then head out to explore...

Our sink was a rock on a slab. cute. not functional.

Asked for a 2nd pillow. Never got one.

Through that glass was the shower...

We took the hotels recommendation and had drinks and dinner at a place by the water called Kungsholmen.  The bar was a lot of fun... then when our table was ready we were sat by the water... NICE!...

Cute Husband aka Mike.

The food was average tasting at best and extremely expensive (Boo!)... 

You don't even want to know what our bill was (Boo!).

One of their waiters was from Tampa Bay and stopped to say Hi and ask where we were from. I guess we didn't sound or look local... A zillion dollars and drinks later we decide to forgo another expensive taxi ride and just walk back to the hotel...

I'm glad we did because it was a very fun walk home...  We were "slightly" tipsy and Mike was obsessed with yelling "Swedes" "help me Swedes" every other minute.  I think he was trying to make them think that I was a beater...  At one point I had to cover his mouth.  He later said, "you know we are having a good time when you have to cover my mouth" which I thought was hilarious.

We saw a lot of cool stuff on the walk home... this little statue that resembles the Manneken Pis in Brussels, Belgium... a cool club called f12 that we had to talk ourselves into NOT going into because it was so late...we now wished we would of just gone in... and then there was this hotel rooftop playing music like "splish splash I was takin' a bath" and we wanted to go there, but had no idea how to get in... we finally fought all the temptation and found ourselves in Room 135 and feel fast asleep...

At around 430am/5am I was woke up by Mike saying "You gotta be kidding me", I had no idea what was going on... I later found out it was a shaddy van outside our window blaring the "call to prayer"... We were both like, Seriously Stockholm? Seriously?...


Later we headed out to explore... We visited the Vasa Museum which is a Royal War ship from that late 1600's that sailed a few yards, tipped over, sank and killed some people.

Now all these years later they pulled up it and made a museum out of it.  I thought it was a bit depressing. I myself wouldn't want the reminder of the failure. However, not my ship not my business, not my problem.  The upside is that it employs people and the employees seem happy about that.  Speaking of something unhappy how about standing in the rain like we did waiting to get inside... We are not line people...

We also did the hop-on hop-off boat which was pretty cool...

We walked down the longest touristy shopping street I think I have ever walked down... Drottninggatan (Queen Street)


Checked out the changing of the guards at the Royal Palace which was pretty cool...

  

this one makes me laugh...

Checked out the Old Town area...

The Food Market which was really lame... The nice shopping streets which was a bit "seen it all already"... and then when we couldnt take getting rained on any longer we went inside "Taco Bar" and ate some tacos and had a few Corona's...  After a while we decided rain or not we must leave the Taco Bar... After 30 minutes we finally got a cab which took us to a somewhat lame "pub" that he said use to be rain by monks many many years ago... We go in and heard not one word of English...nor was it written anywhere... However, on the radio they were playing Tim McGraw in English which made me smile.  After one beer we left the pub and took our wet selves to the room.  Fell asleep watching a snake documentary and woke up hungry.

I talked Mike into going downstairs to the restaurant and while he ordered a plate of Swedish meatballs and mashed potatoes...I ordered a bowl of strawberries with cream, 1 chocolate ganache truffle and a cup of decaf coffee.  Of course, I nabbed a couple of his DELICIOUS Swedish meatballs.

The next day we checked out the Fotografiska (Photography Museum) which I loved!
We saw a great exhibit by Lennart Nilsson (A Child is Born), Vee Speers (The Birthday Party), Joel-Peter Witkin (Bodies), Anders Peterson (From Back Home) and my favorite one of all Annie Leibovitz (A Photographer's Life 1990-2005)  I hope to take pictures that amazing one day!

We took our final stroll through the Modern Art museum where we cruised by some Ed Ruscha, Salvador Dali, Irving Penn, Andy Warhol, Picasso, and much much more...

A few cool places of interest:

St. George and the Dragon

National Museum

Royal Palace

Royal Apartments

A few cute, funny, random things we saw along the way...

Mike flipping me off...

Bike for skilled person only...

Stockholm telephone booth

cupcake bath tub for babies or pets...

cool anti violence gun sculpture...

Duff Beer at a beer store...

A few pictures of Stockholm itself:

bad picture of me, but who cares...

Then off to the airport where we had chips and a cookie for dinner...

Did we like Stockholm? Yes.
Is Stockholm expensive? Yes.
Would we ever go back to Stockholm? Maybe.
Did we like all the rain while there? No.

Next up.... Munich, Germany...

Cheers,
WMMc