First, I have to show you some pics of our room because it was cooooool. I was actually a little worried that our hotel was even TOO COOL for us until we joined the usual socks/sandals (Tripadvisor-reading) folks at breakfast. We had our ACNE jeans so I don't know why I was so worried. We kinda got a bad vibe when we checked in because the check in person was being completely monopolized by another hotel guest and didn't even say hello to us for the longest time. At first, we were ticked off at the reception guy but throughout our stay we realized that particular guest was a FREAK who was ALWAYS harassing the receptionists. I think he probably went downstairs to talk to them right after breakfast in order to have enough time to pick a place for dinner.
As in Copenhagen, we had stunningly beautiful weather in Stockholm and spent a lot of time just wandering about soaking it all in.
By this point, our reserves of clean clothes were depleted so we hit up H&M (more useful souvenirs!) for t-shirts and socks. When we were leaving Jeff was all "Wow!! I had no idea H&M was so cheap!". Clearly, he has been living under a rock, or the modern day equivalent: noise-cancelling headphones.
We went to the Army Museum, which I thought was going to be musty and booo-rrrinnggg, but it was one of the best museums we went to the entire trip. Just great displays and a very in-depth English audio guide. Also, its discussion of Sweden's "neutrality" during WW2 was surprisingly unbiased.
We went to an open-air museum called Skansen. It was founded in 1891 and contains 150 traditional buildings from all over Sweden that the founder bought, dismantled, and rebuilt in Skansen. The buildings themselves were cool, but the best part was all the Nordic animals that live there. We saw brown bears, wolves, wolverines, lynx, moose, wild boars, European bison, reindeer, foxes, and seals. A lot of them had babies, too.
It was really hard to tear ourselves away from the lynx babies playing with their mama. Please ignore the part in the video where I'm a huge bi-otch. Always a pleasure, right Jeff?
Other than the baby animals, the real highlight of our trip was going sea kayaking in the Stockholm archipelago. It was nice to get away from the tourists and do something active. Our hotel got major negative points for starting breakfast no earlier than 8am on the weekend so we had McDonalds (haha) and took a 45 minute bus, followed by a 15 minute water taxi ride to the island of Runmarö.
Jeff and I shared a kayak. I was perfectly happy with this arrangement until Jeff was like "GOD. I can't believe I have to share with you." Excuse me, WHAT? And then he wanted to be, like, in front of everyone as if he KNEW WHERE WE WERE GOING. Sometimes I just stopped rowing because we were getting too far away from the pack, but then I was dude, stop rowing, I want to get a work out too ya know!! All of this was punctuated by me demanding every 30 seconds whether or not Jeff was steering (which, just so you know, HE WASN'T). Classic.
We paddled for a few hours before stopping on an island for a swim and a picnic lunch. I'm still fantasizing about that lunch. The food wasn't unusually good but the hard work getting there, the sun, the swim, and the scenery (including Philip, the hunky guide) all combined to make something awesome.
So that was our trip. We had such a fun time, particularly in Stockholm, and though we'd love to go back there are so many other new places to see! Hmm where to next....
