I am in the middle of two lovely weeks off from uni. Really we are practically finished. There are only 2 classes, 2 assignments and an evaluation between me and the final semester of nursing! But at the moment I am totally free.
The freedom started with the 90’s and 00’s party in the Celsius basement. Another great night, mainly thanks to the number of times that the likes of Spice Girls, Aqua and Backstreet Boys were played! Love that music.
Most of us managed to get a few hours of sleep between the party and our 8 am train to Stockholm, though I admit that I saw much less of the scenery than I intended to! What I did see was very nice though.
Anyway, Stockholm…
We slept on a boat. We ate at this great pizza/pasta place which is cheap AND gourmet. And apparently there is one in Brisbane. Valpiano, watch out for it. Also ate lots of fika. How I love fika. Apple cake with vanilla sauce (ie custard) is my current favourite fika food. The Vasa museum was awesome. A humongous and fancy war ship that sailed only about a kilometer before it sank. We also loved the City Hall, where the Nobel Prize ball is held. The steps there are a perfect height and width! Gamla Stan, the old town, was cute. And as usual, get past the tourist strip and its level of amazing-ness multiplied by about a million. We saw the palace guards. Who ARE allowed to talk, and can do their march whenever they feel like it, but evidently will not do it on request! Stockholm has beautiful parks for wondering in the sun. And the waterways. Stockholm is made up of lots of little islands, so it is all about the water. And with the water comes the Archipelago. Amazing. We only visited one little island, but how cute it was. Apart from the scary birds protecting their nesting partners! We also shopped. Did quite a bit of shopping! We went out one night too, but spent most of the night discussing whether or not we were in fact in a gay bay. Turns out we weren’t. Anyway, Stockholm was great, and a large proportion of our travelling group now intends to move there!
From Stockholm, just two of us went on to Gothenburg, another Swedish city just 4 hours north of Malmö.
The hostel was awesome, my best yet I think. Another very cute and very Swedish city. We hid from the rain in a very fun museum, Universeum, where there is a real life rain forest in which monkeys run around freely, and where you can do all sorts of cool things, like make bubbles! We spent an overcast day at Liseberg, a big theme park. The rollercoasters where awesome, but the unexpected highlight was the ultra scary haunted house! We also quite enjoyed Ben & Jerry’s, and a couple of cocktails at the Ice Hotel! When the sun came out on our last day, we wondered an animal park, with a random seal pool in the middle of it, and then explored Haga, the Gothenburg old town.
I am now home (well, in Malmö) for two nights before Lainie and I head off to Poland tomorrow for a week. I have just booked my ticket from Malmö to London at the end of the semester today. We really do not have much time left here!
