Sun makes it alll better

What can I say about this past weekend? Fun. Higher expectations and some irresponsibility. Fun.
After arriving late in Stockholm on Wednesday we went and met up with Terry and a friend of Cailan's at a bar named after the Beach Boys album Pet Sounds. The bar was decorated with all sorts of 60's surfer records and posters. Kinda odd, but it was a good time. The place was really small, from what I can tell, bars are cafés by day and around 1930 split to be half bar half café and slowly rid themselves of food patrons by 2230.

Thursday and Friday we spent aimlessly wandering the streets of Stockholm. Stockholm is comprised of 14 islands, each island having its own draw. We spent our time on only two and a section of mainland. Our hostel was on a small island, Gamla Stan, which is the oldest part of Stockholm. Where the royal palace and parliament are. It was nice, narrow cobbled streets - very "European". The palace was nothing to gawk at, really, I couldn't tell it apart from other buildings, cept there were a whole bunch of blue clad guards out front. We surprisingly arrived right at the changing of the guards, which made me wonder, do palaces actually do that, or is it a tourist thing that palaces have all adopted and modified to be theatrical and draw crowds? I think yes.
We continued to walk around and made our way to the mainland which is the commercial district/area of Stockholm. The highlight of that was seeing cherry blossoms! In the midst of the cherry blossoms were a bunch of people meditating. Turns out it was a Falun Gong silent protest, for what? We couldn't figure that out, but we got a pamphlet of the meditation steps, but no answer as to why they were there.

Stockholm I found to be very bland. It was just a lot of big concrete buildings that all looked the same. Nothing had character. Mind you the fact that it was overcast and intermittently spitting throughout the days might have had some negative impact on my opinion of the city. Regardless, I still was not as impressed with Stockholm as I was anticipating I would be. Though we did find a fantastic restaurant, it was a traditional beer hall from the 19th C where they served Swedish meals. Oh my goodness was it good. I got Swedish meatballs and lingonberries, forget pickled herring, this is now my idea of Swedish food. Mmmm. Cailan got salmon, and when it came out, that was exactly what it was, nothing else. Raw salmon at that, though Terry is certain it was soaked overtime in lemon juice. Jumping back to the lingonberries, I am certain they are partridge berries. They are delicious and Swedes eat them on everything. They look just like cranberries but are sweeter, hence my speculation they are partridge berries.

Friday night we boarded our ferry trip to Helsinki, advertised as a booze cruise. We had heard many horror stories about how intoxicated the Finns get on this trip. That was total bullsh*t, everyone on the boat was ridiculously intoxicated, be it Finns or Swedes, or the super nice Italians, or Iranians. Everyone we met, young and seniors, were indulging heavily, it was pretty unreal. Thinking we should differentiate ourselves from the others, we classed it up and went for a nice meal of reindeer and wine, followed by some karaoke (not sure if this fits into classy or not?) One of the advertised highlights of the trip was an ABBA tribute band. They were terrible, and sang only 5 songs. We were severely disappointed. To make up for this we befriended Italians from Brescia and danced the night away.
The next morning however was not as much fun.
We docked in Helsinki at 930, ugh. But it was already +18 out! The nicest weather since I've been in Europe! Sooo we pushed through our tiredness and walked into town. Already, I was enjoying Helsinki ten times more than Stockholm. We walked through a huge open market where they sold everything! I bought an amber ring there, sadly there are no flies in it. There was loads of fresh fruit and veggies, hand knit and felted clothing, furs and wood crafts galore, it was a super neat market. There was a large park through the centre of town where I'm pretty sure half the town was basking in the sun. We walked around for about 15min and decided we should do this as well. Who needs to see more churches (though they were neat ones). That's what we did allll day, well, until our boat returned back to Stockholm that evening. As we were sailing away, we passed by an old fort which covers six islands. I am kicking myself now for not going there and basking in the sun. It looked so nice and was full of picnickers. Suomenlinna was built in the 18thC to keep out Russian expansion, but wasn't really effective.
Anyways, we decided the return trip would be low key, we would hang out in the sauna and then go to bed. Unfortunately we missed arriving at the sauna by 10 min and they closed. Argh! So we checked out duty free, where the Swedes were buying multiple shopping carts full of cases of beer (because of how expensive it is in Sweden) and Toblerone, ate some more Swedish meatballs, and woke up back in dreary Stockhom, where Cailan and I proceeded back home to Örebro :(

Check out photos if you want.