Wednesday, July 2, 2008

Tuesday in Stockholm and on that weird cruise ship

On Tuesday, we woke up, ate breakfast at the hotel, and then we set off to go either to the museum of Technology, or this big outdoor museum called Skansen. Outdoor museums are sort of a weird concept. This one holds a zoo and about a hundred buildings brought from all over Sweden, so it's supposed to give you some insight into the past.
We decided to go to Skansen, since it was the most uniquely Swedish, and we'd been to a Science and Technology museum at home. To get to Skansen, we walked forever (our subway passes had expired; the subway didn't go there anyway) and on the way, we stopped to find a geocache we'd looked up the night before. There was another lady there who was geocaching too, so we found the cache, after some looking (it was very cleverly done) and we chatted for a while afterward with her and her husband. They were from Germany and had been around Stockholm, so they told us about stuff there. It was cool.
After that, we walked into Skansen and hiked up this slope to get to the main part of the park. We looked around for a while, and then we decided we wanted to go to the zoo. First we went to the Children's Zoo, which had little animals like chickens and parakeets and turtles that you could pet if you wanted. it was cute. After that, we went to see some other animals like seals and elk.
Our favorite thing was the bears. The sign said they were Brown Bears and there were these two little cubs, romping around and playing and wrestling together. There was another cub, but it was playing more by itself. They were all really cute. It was the highlight of our trip to the park. We walked some more to the front entrance of the park and there we took a ride on this swing thing (you've seen it, I can't remember what it's called) and after that, we left the park, found another geocache, and then walked to the Vasa to look for another one. I sat with Melissa and attempted to braid her hair while everyone else looked. They couldn't find it. We walked some more for a long time and stopped to eat lunch at around 3:00 at this little place inside an office complex. It was actually really good food, for cheap. There were these paninis and sub sandwiches and good salad and these great brown rolls that were basically unlimited.
When we finished, we walked home to the hotel, packed our bags, and went to board the cruise boat that would take us to Finland. Alec and Dad got our tickets while we waited, and then we boarded the boat. Later, Mom classified it accurately enough; she called it "Vegas on a boat." Yech. There were slot machines, sort of trashy people, bad karaoke, shows to watch, outlets, the works. We went to our cabins and left our stuff there. We hung out on the deck while we were leaving Stockholm and watched stuff. Then we got to go up to the top of the boat where they steer, because Alec knew the captain of the boat, so he gave us a tour. it was pretty cool. Then we went around the boat and booked at a place for dinner. Mom and Melissa and I went to our cabin and slept until it was time to eat.
We got up and met everyone else at the restaurant. I blogged a little at this place where they had a connection to the Internet. We all decided to order the starter buffet for our main course, so we got to try all kinds of weird Finnish foods. Then we got the dessert buffet, which had all these other weird things; I only liked one, which was this cobbler type stuff. Yum.
After dinner, Madelyn and I decided to hang out around the boat together, which is basically what we did until 11:30 at night, which was when Mom wanted us to come back. We ran around the boat, watching the band for the dance play (there was a really cute guy at the piano) and we went to the area they had for teenagers. We wanted to do karaoke, but the queue was all full, and it was late anyway. We also spent a lot of time looking for Alec and Dad, because Mom wanted us to remind them to buy duty-free chocolate and stuff. We went back to the room on time and then we got our pajamas on and went to bed.

1 comment:

  1. lol,

    naturally youd observe the one at the piano :)

    Vegas... ewww. We went there to sight see. I couldnt stand it. Id have been content to remain in the one smoke-free area in vegas: our hotel room.

    But... we had lunch at the Flamingo, and they had like an indoor thingy surrounded by glass with animals... and our table was by the koi pond... and you could see the fish through the glass.

    pretty cool.

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