Stockholm!

As promised here are some pictures from my trip! There are still many more to share, but my friends still have to email them to me so I will do another separate post sharing those once I get them.

The trip was a lot of fun, we got there Friday night and went out to have pizza and play a few quiz like games to get to know each other. We had quite the diverse crowd with kids from Thailand, Germany, Italy, Brazil, Australia, Slovakia, New Zealand, Finland, and of course America. All in all there were 26 of us total.

After dinner we made our way back to the hostel that we were staying at which happen to be right in the middle of old town! We got assigned our rooms, three rooms of six and one room of 12! Thankfully I was in a room of six. The next morning we woke up had a little breakfast than headed off to do some sight seeing! We toured Old town, and the Royal Palace then came back to the hostel for some lunch. After lunch we went on a scavenger hunt through out the city and all met at a bowling place at 5 for some bowling and dinner. The dinner were these GIANTIC burgers which you can see in the pictures. Thankfully the place was nice enough to make me a veggie version 🙂. Once stuffed with food we had one last surprise – apparently this is a special weeking in Stockholm called “culture weekend” so all the museums are free and open till midnight! Even though we were exhausted after the long day we all managed to rally and had a great time exploring all the famous museums at night! My favorites were the Nobel museum and army one.

The next morning (Sunday) we packed up our things and went to Skansen which is an outdoor museum with animals – kind of like a zoo but with moose, wolves, bears, pigs, horses. No real exotic animals. It was a gorgeous place and I am glad to have seen it, but seeing all the wild animals locked up made me sad. I hope that zoos and anything that involves the domesticating/enclosing of wild animals becomes outlawed soon, it just is not right in my opinion. Regardless though Skansen was a very beautiful (and huge) museum. Click HERE for more information on Skansen.

We had lunch at Skansen as well, then it was time for good byes. It was sad saying bye to all my new friends, but I was also completely exhausted and really excited to sleep in my own bed again. My train ride home was nice and uneventful and before I knew it I was back in Varberg.

Overall I am so happy to have seen Stockholm, it is SUCH an amazing city and unlike anything I have ever seen before. I would describe it as Gothenburg on steroids. There are no skyscrapers, all the buildings have a really old and vintage feel, and barely any cars. Not to mention that the city itself was spotless – no garbage, debris, advertisements, or even pigeons in sight.

I feel as though this was great preparation for what the Euro Tour I am doing this summer will be like! Tons of walking, little sleep, and lots of moving from place to place. Although if I was this tired after only 2 days of sightseeing, I do not know how I am going to survive living like this for 3 weeks straight! It will be an adventure that is for sure.

Swedish Word of the Day: “resa” – trip