Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, London Eye We got up and went straight away to the Buckingham Palace to see the changing of the guards. There were way too many people to see anything. We found out that the reason there were so many people was because the Queen was in town to celebrate her birthday. Thanks for the invite, Liz! We walked around the other side to the park and we ended up getting an even better view of the guards leaving. Michelle and I found this war memorial dedicated to animals in war hilarious and Carissa thought we were [View Full Entry]

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Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, British Museum, and the British Library (RAIN) This morning we started out going to Temple Church, which was in The DaVinci Code. It wasn’t really that great, but they did have tombs dating back to the 1200’s. I was sure that they had filmed the movie in a different church, because none of it seemed familiar. We walked to Big Ben and took some funny pictures, with all the 100,000 other tourists. We walked over to Westminster Abbey, where some people were protesting the war in Iraq. It was pretty expensive to go inside, so we just [View Full Entry]

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London, here we come, baby! AmandaAirport Disaster (RAIN) We started the day by “trying” to get to the airport. I say, “trying” because we took this really fast train from the Stockholm Central Station to the Arlanda airport. The train seriously went 200 km/hr. We got to the airport 3 hours early and then realized that we needed to go to the other airport across town. I'd be lying if I said this was the first time my sister has done this "go to the wrong airport" thing. It was 1.5 hours away and would have cost us 1500 kr [View Full Entry]

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Botanical Garden (RAIN) Mom and Cathy left today at 7 AM! Michelle and I didn’t get out of bed until almost noon. We took the train to the University and then walked to the Botanical Garden. It was HUGE! We saw so many beautiful flowers and lakes. We also saw the world’s largest lilypad. They have a lilypad that only blooms one night a year, so these plant enthusiasts (nerds) come to the garden every night for a few nights in the summer to wait for it to bloom. We walked around the old town for a while to find [View Full Entry]

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Happy Birthday, Michelle! We got up and ate the rest of our strawberries. We’ve been eating granola cereal and yogurt, which is really delicious. We took a bus to the Vassa Museum. Cathy was in a foul mood today (she claimed it was because her hand hurt). She even said the sound of my flip-flops annoyed her. The Vassa was a ship that sunk in the harbor of Stockholm in the 1600’s on its maiden voyage. Its location in the harbor was lost for hundreds of years but then they found it and brought it to the surface in the [View Full Entry]

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Sweden Day Four Amanda Stockholm Adventures We got Stockholm Cards today. It’s a tourist card that gives huge discounts on museums and free busses and metros for 3 days. A free boat tour is also included with the card. We took the boat tour that goes around the city because Stockholm has a huge harbor surrounding it. I was baking in the window seat for too long on the boat and started to feel sick. After the boat tour, we walked to this department store called NK which had really amazing architecture. After meeting up with Inglea, we took a [View Full Entry]

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Sweden Day Three Amanda Avar’s and Train Back to Stockholm I’m pretty sure the jet-lag hit. Michelle and I had planned on riding bikes to the train station to buy tickets to go back to Stockholm, but I was dead to the world when she tried to wake me in the morning. When she got there the place was closed, but luckily they had a machine where she could buy the tickets. Mom and Cathy needed tickets but we didn’t because we had our Eurorail passes. Sven-Eric took me to the store to find cardamom, and some sort of salt [View Full Entry]

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Sweden Day Two Amanda Dinner at Anki’s and Michelle’s Manual Adventure Today we got to Ostersund at 7:30 AM. I was joking with Michelle that I don’t think I remembered what 7:30 AM looked like. We had noticed on the train that it didn’t ever seem like it was night because it hadn’t gotten too dark. I had on an eye mask, but Michelle said it started to get light again around 3 AM. Mom and Sven-Eric (related to us in a way that is complicated) picked us up from the train station. Elsie is Mormor’s cousin and speaks perfect [View Full Entry]

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Stockholm to Ostersund Amanda Ingela and Stockholm After landing in Madrid, we had to go through customs and security again. Stockholm was our final destination and we seriously had just gotten off an FAA security approved flight so I was a bit confused as to why we had to go through security a second time, but “European Amanda/ Chill Amanda” was going with the flow. Ok, well I may have been a security risk. Before we left, Michelle got us these insane looking camp-inspired silverware sets that were heavy and bulky. When we got our food they gave us small, [View Full Entry]

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In the Air Amanda O’Hare Airport We only had to get to the airport like 3 hours early. I’m sure Sharad would think we were insane. Michelle and I ate at the Chili’s in the airport. Michelle suggested Panda Express, but I vetoed that! Before we got through security, a bag when through the scanner with no tags and caused a huge issue. When we were waiting in the terminal to get on the plane there were several groups of Indians (families and individuals). After boarding began, none of them got onto the plane. I didn’t get it. It reminded [View Full Entry]

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