Wow where do I start? Well this past week has been the best one since I have been in Sweden, no contest. Kale finally arrived so as you can imagine I was pretty happy to see him. And not to mention I didn't have to go to work at all!After being up though for 22 hours, he was pretty tired, so we didn't do much at all the first 2 days. I just showed him around Uppsala, which I realized actually doesn't take that long. There's not much to see here at all. We ventured out though on Wednesday to go to Stockholm. And of course it is raining. Out of the 8 days he was here, it rained 6 of them! I'm telling ya, this weather is just ridiculous, I don't know how people live here all their lives. Anyway, we got stuck in the downpour walking to catch the ferry to Djurgarden in Stockholm. Welcome to Sweden I told him as we are just drenched. We went to the Vasa Museum, and let me just say I usually hate museums. The Louvre in Paris, one of the most impressive musuems in the world, I spent maybe an hour there. I said I just want to see DaVinci's Mona Lisa and get the hell out. So yes, that is how much I hate musuems. But the Vasa Musuem was actually really impressive. It showcases this old ship that sunk within 20 minutes of leaving. They reconstructed it with all the pieces that were found in the sea.On Thursday we went to Skansen, it's the largest open-air museum in the world. They say it's "Sweden in a minature," so I thought we'd give this a shot. I was really only interested in the Nordic animals. The reindeer were soooooooooo cute. Absolutely adorable. Even though they are cute little things, I did try a sample of the reindeer, and it was actually really good. I may have to actually order it sometime at a restaurant. Luckily we had good sunny weather while we were in Stockholm, but don't worry it did rain that evening....Friday morning we left to go to Gotland for the weekend. It's an island 3 hours from Sweden in the middle of the Baltic. Getting there was easy, it was getting to our hostel that was the hard part. After being indecisive when we got off the boat, we finally decided to rent bikes and bike to our hostel. Good thing we did, we would of had a hell of a walk which would have included a lot of cursing from me. The girl at the tourist office said just follow the road along the sea and you'll run right into the Snack Annex. Sounds easy enough right? Well we did run into a place called Snack. I didn't think that was it because it was missing the word Annex so we continued on our bikes and found nothing. We asked a couple of Swedish girls at a campsite down the road and they said that was it. So we go for round two and head into the building to find that that reception is closed! There is nobody around except for the gardener out front who doesn't speak any English. So we're like great what the hell are we supposed to do now? Finally we find a lady in one of the hallways and I asked her where we can check in. She tells me there is nobody that works in the recpetion this time of year! So now I'm really confused and have no idea what to do. We talk to her more and find out we are actually in an apartment building and this lady has her own flat here. Ahhhh, so we weren't even at the right place. Luckily she helped us and told us where to go. We hopped on our bikes once again and found it up these 2 hills which wasn't even on the street that it said it was. But we finally found it after an hour and half. It was a pretty setting though. We rode our bikes on this path right along the sea the whole way there. It was set out in the country side 20 minutes from Visby and had a view of the sea. Not the most luxurious room, as it is a hostel, but it worked. Once we finally found it anyway!
So that night we just rode our bikes around Visby checking out the sights. I've been to a lot of cities in Europe but I have never seen a city like this before. It is so unique and pretty. You almost do feel like you're back in time. It is so old and medieval looking. There is a wall that surrounds the whole inner city that was built for the Viking wars thousands and thousands of years ago. The streets are so narrow with cobblestone everywhere. And the houses and are just so quaint and cozy.
Saturday we did a little shopping, tooks tons of pictures (I'm a picture freak) and decided to bike out to this big cliff along the coast. It was about a 45 minute bike ride and it was well worth the trip.
Sunday we couldn't do much as it was just downpouring! But I was determined to do a little shopping, so we put on our rain gear and got wet. Ended up sitting in the ferrry terminal 3 hours before our boat left.It was a great weekend, great week, sad to see it end. Took him to the airport this morning to see him off. But won't be much longer until I'm back in the states. =) Until then, I'll continue to see as much as I can.
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