Come to Sweden…for the sunburn?!?!

 So, dear Reader, 

Here we are again.  Adventure XXX.  Hang onto your seats, bc many days I’m not going to know where I am. 

I am writing this on a British Airways flight from Dublin to London.  We are in London till Sunday, which is (do the math) days. 

But we’ve already done stuff. 

We will leave airport/transportation stories till later, okay?

Due to $$$ we flew to Dublin via Stockholm on SAS.  Which is a perfectly good airline.  We had 11 hours in Stockholm.  The express train was 18 minutes to the center of town.

So, without a night’s sleep, we dumped our carryon luggage in a locker and away we went to town.

We will never forget this: it was 87 and sunny in Stockholm.  I didn’t know it did such things (it’s kinda north and it’s more famous for skating on the Baltic Sea there than heat), but it was brutal.  

We hopped on the hop on-hop off bus (get it?) outside the train station and away we went. 

The city hall was amazing.  Then we came to the palace, where guards stood in sentry boxes like someone really lived there.  Here’s our guard picture.  And a palace fountain pic. 

Wiki travel said “see this,” so we hopped off there and walked 500 meters (yeah it takes some figuring out) to the medieval church which has a six or seven syllable name.  We didn’t pay the 6€ To investigate. 

After a cooling drink and appetizer, back to the bus. 

There was an ABBA museum.  🙄

Stockholm is a lovely city (see pic), full of lakes and the Baltic Sea — the Venice of the North as the tour guide told us. :) It also, purposefully, reminds one of Paris, with some tree-lined avenues.  

And, having made the circuit, we were back on the express to the airport and Dublin.

Where we got a free Guinness (there’s Karen’s first attempt at the challenge) and finally found a pizza-pasta place for dinner at almost 10 their time. 

And then to sleep, up, showered and to the airport for 8 AM.  Rah rah. 

Okay, airport things: Newark airport is a poorly designed disaster.  The SAS “circle” (bc its organized in circular pods) had four flights leaving at almost the same time so there were a thousand plus people waiting to jam onto the huge planes.  Ours ran late, which meant we mixed more with the crowd going to Vienna than we were really supposed to.  We were delayed an hour, not an announced delay, but just “we’re standing around and waiting” thing. 

Finally we got on the plane and the kid in front and behind us yelled for lengthy parts of the 8 hour trip.  Isn’t that what soma is for? :)

The trip to Dublin was almost as bad as Stockholm airport had people lined up as they came in! They weren’t allowing people up to the departure hall until less than 3 hours before their flight!  Crazy stuff.  And the kids around us were apeshit…the one in front of us spent a large part of the 2 hour flight on the floor in the aisle.🙄 

Our taxi driver to the airport this morning, an unhappy Irishman named Paul, said it was the busiest year he’d ever seen — it wasn’t just Americans “it’s everyone.  Everyone wants to get out after Covid.”  He also had a quick rundown of American politics and policy. :) 

And that was day one and ????  Like I said, YOU do the math.  I do think it’s Wednesday, Pooh Bear.