Gamla Stan

We set the alarm for 10:00 am this morning because we had to “check out” of our single room by 11:00. Around 11:15, we moved our luggage to the luggage room downstairs since we couldn’t check back in until 6:00. Before we walked out though, Brandy found out our beds in the dorm room were ready so we bought a little lock for 30 kr and stuck our backpacks in a locker by our bunk beds. We headed out this morning to basically walk around other parts of Stockholm, which no particular end site in mind. We figured we’d start by making our way over to Gamla Stan (Old Town) by starting near the Royal Palace and watching the changing of the guard. When we got there, we weren’t really sure where it was happening so we just took pictures in the front of the palace and then walked around to the harbor side. We made our way to the other side of the palace and heard royal music playing and I wandered ahead of Brandy and found the guard ceremony. Basically, the part we caught consisted of a small marching band on horses playing some stately music. We then started just wandering around. We were trying to follow a self-guided walking tour from my tour book but we weren’t really doing well with it and figured we’d enjoy it more if we just started walking and did our own thing. We walked into a couple of beautiful cathedrals with amazing stained glass and massive organs. We started getting into more of the little shops and cam across the Nobel Museum which is where there is a tribute to all the past Nobel Prize winners. We didn’t go in but sat for a moment on the benches in the square. After walking around a bit longer on some random cobblestone roads, we decided to head up Västerlänggatan (a street) that happened to be where all the action was! When we first turned onto the street, we realized we hit tourist heaven. Every souvenir shop in this city was located on this street in this part of town. As we went further up the street, the stores started turning into more fashion stores and less like tourist traps. When we actually realized where we were (back at the palace), we kept going straight up a different road and walked right through the Parliament buildings. We then thought that maybe we would go to another little section of Stockholm, across another canal, to have a picnic in a park. Brandy popped into a café to get some food to go and then we headed back to the hostel to figure out if the park we wanted to go to was actually a park (some places say park or garden in Swedish but are really more like cement show areas, like just squares to people watch in at the center of town). Once we sat down, we decided to just eat here at the hostel and that’s what we’re finishing with now. It’s already 3:00 and we’re not sure what else we want to do today. If anything, we’ll prob. nap and then do more walking. I’m now on the high speed connection and will try to upload my 200 or so pictures I have so far so you can start seeing just how much we’ve seen.

On a few side notes, as I'm laying here in my bunk bed in our c0-ed, 16-person dorm room, I think of 3 things. 1) This is like menucha at camp. I feel like I should be writing letters home or exploring a care package just like I did all those summers at camp. 2) I think the dorm is actually going to be much quieter than the first room we had... there's a lights-off quiet policy that starts around 11:00 each night. 3) A lot of people from France are here. French is the dominant language that I keep hearing from multiple people here.

I think I am going to take a nap now. It's been sunny and hot and I think I have a bit of a tan going, but it's also making me very tired come mid-day. Brandy went off to check out one of the museums and should be back in a bit and maybe we'll walk around some more later today.