For my favorite Swedish princess.

My gallivanting was put on pause just long enough for some shut-eye and mooching food off my housemates before heading north. As excited as I was to be going to Sweden, I really needed at least a week to digest all my Turkish adventures (and resting my footsies) before boldly going to yet another place where no Margaret (except for Maggie and probably maaaany others) had gone before. But time was of the essence, so off we pounced.

Kassia and I flew up and up out of Germany on a rather nice day and I got great pleasure out of the squares of highlighter fields that speckled the general flatness of that part of the world.


If Joshua were ever to read my blog, he might have appreciated all the offshore wind farms that we flew over.

And then, Sweden. That beautiful beautiful utopia of naturally wonderful wonderousness.

Our royally blue clad Ryanair flight personnel deposited us at one of Stockholm's more remote airports, where we got pretty play money from the ATM and got ourselves on a city-bound bus. It was a lovely, cloudless day.

Well, for the first few minutes, anyway.

The hour-and-a-half-ish-long bus ride turned into an almost 3 hour bus ride when an accident on the highway got us stuck in 7 kilometers worth of traffic jam on toast. The charming and witty bus driver alerted us of the situation and said he would venture with us on another road into "unknown territory." It was great to see more scenery and all, but delay cut out a good chunk of our city exploration time. Once we finally arrived in the city o' islands, we located a friendly tourist map and aimed for Gamla Stan, the isle of the pastel old town. I got a little trigger happy.

I don't usually take pictures of statues, but it's necessary whenever dragon slaying is involved.

I didn't notice this until Kassia pointed it out, but all the soldiers were slurping on ice cream cones. If Swedish military service only involves wandering beautiful places and eating ice cream, sign me up.

Unless a sign about an eco-friendlier car wash, I'm guessing this is to be avoided.

Across from Gamla Stan was a big old schooner that had been converted into a youth hostel. We wanted to go play, but they were pretty disagreeable when it came to letting strangers in. Apparently there's another hostel in a converted jumbo jet at the main airport.

My aim was a little off on this one, but I was racing a crowd of people that were about to crash my shot. And the sun was bright. So there.

Lookit where we didn't pay a visit to the royals! We thought about it, but figured they were busy preparing for the upcoming wedding.

This is what happens where you're in the right place at the right time. I think it's completely fun and whimsical.

We weren't meeting our couch surfing host until late that night, but luckily the sun didn't set until after 11, which gave us ample time to wander.

As it turns out, our host was a wonderful fabulous generous great person with much tea and friendliness. She babysat us all day on Saturday and showed us around her lovely part of the world and the giant forest cemetery.



We cooked a delicious dinner together that night, including American brownies - which we took to her friend's Eurovision Party! Watching all the fantastical and mostly ridiculous performances of pop songs from countries all over the world with a fun group of Swedish folks couldn't have been more more entertaining. What made it even better was when Germany's song contestant won. DEUTSCHLAND!!! (Except that I actually wanted Moldova to win. Here's why. Mostly for the saxophone.)

The pre-dawn was already glowing in the not-so-frozen north as we made our way home around 1am. After just enough sleep and breakfast, we had put an end to our wonderful weekend away by heading back to the airport.

It was a short visit, but thanks to our wonderful host, we learned lots about Sweden and it's culture and people. I could easily see why Lady Maggie is so enraptured with it, and I hope to return and see more of the landscape (with her) in the future. Actually, everyone should go. Yup.

I believe that concludes the big travels for this kid. Well, for the time being anyway. Maybe my next post will be about Germany again. Just maybe.