Seeing the Sights: Stockholm

TL;DNR version: I went to Stockholm and saw things.

All right, with that out of the way...

I went to Stockholm this weekend and saw things. We took a ferry (AKA a cruise ship) from Tallinn after spending an awesome day there. In Tallinn we went to the Christmas Market, since it opened Friday and we were there Friday. It smelled fantastic with the traditional Estonian Christmas foods and drinks. There were a bunch of little stalls in the main square square surrounding a massive, decorated tree and a giant stage at one end which had Christmas themed scenery projected and music playing. It also happened to be the first day of snow, so basically it was perfect. After wandering a bit, we went to lunch at Taco Express (TACOS!!) and then headed for American style pie at the only American restaurant (the Texas Honky Tonk & Cantina) this side of anywhere. I found it as I was meandering back from London and so of course we had to try it. Especially being so close to Thanksgiving, pecan pie seemed the right choice. They don't serve pies warm, which apparently is a common custom in the South. But with the weather outside warm pie would have been nice. Either way, that pie was pretty dag on good.

The Tallinn Christmas Market, with the
Town Hall in the background.

We played in the snow in Tallinn. A lot. Jordan & I made
snow angels. Not a lot of snow, so they kinda sucked.

A tree made of tea cups. Uh, I think yes.

So pie aside, we headed toward the docks, picked up our tickets, and headed off. I've been on a similar ferry when crossing the English Channel, but it's still nothing like the ferries back home; definitely more like the cruise ship tour and lunch from, what, first grade? There were restaurants and shops and bars and a currency exchange, etc. We tossed our backpacks into our cabin and headed up a deck to the store to grab food before chit-chatting for a while. We met up with some members of our group in the lounge before heading back to the room to play word games. We played a geography game in which the challenge became determining spelling based on language (in Ukrainian it starts with a V, in English a W; in Hungarian it starts with a U, in Georgian a G, in Russian something else), and then the game where you ask questions to guess the word on your forehead. Lesson learned: If the question is, "Am I European?" and the answer given is "Uhhh...?" you're Russian or Soviet, depending on your time period. All in all, a fun evening, definitely helped fill the 17 hour ride.

The next morning we arrived in Stockholm. I got up to watch us pull in from the sun deck, and saw all the colourful houses of Sweden and some Swedish swans (that's for you, Mom). We had roughly 7 hours in Stockholm, which is certainly not a lot of time to visit such a large city. We had a bit of a plan but were willing to go wherever our moods and interests took us. The group we traveled with split in two, one group heading for the Metro to spend the day visiting museums, and the other (my group) decided to see the city on foot. Our dock was about an hour outside the city centre on foot, but we saw some awesome things on the way. Seeing more of Stockholm, if not maybe the most popular places, and less of the inside of buses and trains. We found some gorgeous buildings and parks, and generally just really enjoyed seeing Stockholm.

We crossed a bridge, since there are so many in Stockholm, and came across this park, at the entrance of which was this giant gate. It, among other things, sparked a discussion as to why the USA decided to go with the most bland architecture it could find. We don't have super cool buildings or bright blue gates with gold deer. What up with that?!
There were so many amazing buildings around that we started calling dibs for our European vacation homes, a game we started a while ago on another trip. Here are the two places I called dibs on:

 Google Maps; Looks a little Addams family, right?

This one is an apartment on top of a... church? with the most
incredible view of the city. Stay tuned & I'll show you...

One of the monuments in the park:
Jenny Lind, a Swedish singer. There are times
I really miss my dresses...

Old phone booth.

There were only a couple of things on our "must see/do" list, so we basically wandered around the city, taking pictures of all sorts of things, like really awesome looking movie-style alley ways. I've got a few of those, but others have pictures of nearly every alley in Stockholm. I suggested they build a map with these. We also saw the Stockholm Christmas market, which was surprisingly smaller than the one in Tallinn.

As happens, the hungers struck. We asked at the tourist office for some recommendations on restaurants serving traditional Swedish food, and while they were surprised by the question, we headed over and had lunch under the streets of Sweden. Here's my Swedish meatball sandwich, specifically so people could see the pink-ness of the sauce. It was actually really good, though we did get it because it was one of the cheapest things on the menu. The restaurant wasn't as cheap as we'd hoped, and we had to contend with understanding the Swedish kroona. 100 kroona is roughly 10 euros. I don't understand currencies with conversions like this; anything that says 125... for dinner sounds nuts! That's such a big number!

Anna read somewhere about a viewpoint at which we could see all of Stockholm. While it was a bit out of the way, it was the last stop we made before heading back to the ship. The view was spectacular. Old and new, hustle and bustle alongside quiet and calm (and off to the side there you can see my Stockholm apartment); all the lights of the city. I wasn't there long, I didn't do much, but I do love Stockholm.

On the trip back we watched some really really weird Estonian cartoons. So weird they cannot be explained, but they're by Ülo Pikkov. And! I learned to finish one side of a Rubix cube. (Kudos to Lela for that one.)

One of those alley ways, up near the viewpoint.

Light up moose stampede through central Stockholm.
 We didn't get very close, but they were
either life-size or bigger than.
(This picture is a lot more blurry
than I thought it was. Apologies.)

The Royal Palace. We're pretty sure this is not the front,
but it was the prettiest side.