Missy & Geoff

Back from sweden now, the home of Pippi Longstockings, Abba, Ikea and the most beautiful women in the world ! We stayed three nights in Stockholm on a converted cruise boat in the harbour amd had a traditional Swedish breakfast every morning (very similar to Germany) consisting of breads, cheeses, cold meats and pickles. On our first day we learnt a very important travel tip - make sure your guide book is uptodate ! We had borrowed a Scandenavian Lonely Planet from our flat which turned out to have been printed in 2003 !! We first discovered this as we arrived at what should have been the 'Ice sculpture Gallery', something we were both really looking forward to and unfortunately it had closed down over a year ago ! Our next tourist stop was a Viking War Ship which once again was recommended in the Lonely planet, we arrived to find it was a mass of charcoal and had recently been burnt !!! Not having much luck, we decided to ditch the book and follow our nose. We jumped on a sightseeing boat which took us through the canals of Stockholm and around the many islands. Stockholm's architecture is amazing, like something out of a storybook. The city is so clean and everyone is very friendly, it is definately a city we would love to live in ! It was not as expensive as we thought it would be, 15 KNR is equivalent to £1 ($3 NZ) and drinks are around 50 KNR, sandwich about 50 KNR.

That afternoon we had a session booked in at the Absolut Ice Bar (the original one is in North Sweden at the Ice Hotel) which was very cool. We were kitted out in big fur lined jackets and hoods. The entire bar, seats, walls and even glasses were made from ice and we had various cocktails made from the different Absolut vodka flavours. It is true that the alcohol hits you far quicker in a cold environment - in my case anyway !

We were staying very close to 'old town' a gourgeous little town named Gamla Stan, this was my favourite place in Stockholm. It consisted on tiny narrow streets, gourgeous little restaurants with flower boxes on the windows, very uneven cobbled streets, tiny galleries where you were greeted at the door usually by the artist, quaint little shops selling kooky crafts and lots of gelato stores. We had dinner there every night in different restaurants, if you sit outside the waitors bring you blankets as it starts to get cold.

The Swedes all seemed to speak English very well however they always spoke in Swedish first. Hello is Swedish is Hej (pronounced 'hey' so of course our pronunciation was perfect !).

For our second day we caught a boat to the island of Djugarden where we went to the worlds first open air museum - Skansen. It was full of traditional Swedish houses, we tried traditional swedish bread and a cinamon danish fresh from the oven ! The most interesting part was the Scandinavian Zoo which had bisons, a lynx, wild boars, otters and brown bears. It was amazing seeing the bears, especially as there were large glass windows and one of the large bears came right up and stood up with paws against the glass. As great as it was to see all these different animals, it was sad because the enclosures were small and not particulary nice.

We saw the 'Vasa', a Viking Warrior Ship which sunk last century on its Maiden Voyage, we went because Geoff really wanted to see it but I really enjoyed it as well. It was massive and the reconstruction done after it was recovered was so time consuming as the whole inside of the vessel was put back to its original state, the original wood was used where possible.

A few dramas coming home as we tried to get rid of our Kroner and left just enough for some lunch for us as we were flying out that afternoon. Completely forgot about a tube ride back to our bus station so power walked with our packs on for an hour to get there. We had enough money left for a banana each and half a danish at the bus station, no complications getting to the airport however our plane had been struck by lightening on its way in. After boarding the plane and sitting on the runway for half an hour, they decided we all had to get off the plane and wait inside the terminal for the maintenance man to check the plane and sign it off. We all got off and went back to the tiny Vasteras airport (there were not even enough seats for everyone to sit down !) and our tummies started to grumble. Of course we didn't have any skroner left and they would accept our £20 note but would be giving us Kroner for change. After an hour of listening to screaming babies and getting really annoyed, we shelled out and put it on the credit card (£15 for two sandwiches and some water !). An hour and a half later we were on the plane, trying to ignore the screaming baby in the seat behind Geoff and took off. Finally ! Then got kicked out of First Class seats on Stanstead express as we had only paid for Standard seats so had to stand, and then the northern line bank branch was closed so had to take the really long way home from Liverpool ! Despite the small setbacks, I loved Stockholm and had an amazing time away. I wish I was here for longer so could visit more of Scandenavia - although it makes for a good excuse to come back to this part of the world !

Photos to come.