Beauty is a Sunny Day in Scandinavia

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Beauty is a Sunny Day in Scandinavia

For our final full day in Stockholm we were really lucky. When we woke and opened the curtains the sun was shining and there was even a little blue in the sky. While rain day-in and day-out can make any place seem miserable, a little sun in this part of the world is absolutely gorgeous. (It’s so beautiful that while I write this part of this blog I have stationed myself in front of a window looking out into Stockholm’s beauty, nice!)

After the great breakfast the day before with Al and Linda we knew we had to get our lazy bums out of bed and get to breakfast. Free breakfast is a blessing and a bane for us. On one hand we get a third meal during the day because breakfast is included. On the other hand, that means we have to get out of bed earlier than we’d really like to in order to get to the included breakfast before everything closes.

After the breakfast downstairs in the restaurant we set off into town looking for something to keep us busy. We had missed the Vasa Museum the day before but decided that the weather was just to gorgeous for us to spend our day inside. We, instead, chose to take a boat tour of the archipelago that separates Stockholm from the Baltic Sea. With that in mind we set off on foot to find the boat tours.

Turns out that there are a plethora of boat tours in Stockholm that hope to separate a tourist from his money. We found a decent cruise that was relatively short because it used a fast boat and zoomed through the island straits. Fast boat equals happy Kel. As any regular reader of our blog knows Kel loves anything that could be even slightly construed as dangerous (she calls it “exciting”). A fast boat was right up her alley.

We had to wait a little while for the tour to start and were excited by time the tour actually started. Unfortunately for Kel, the fast boat was fast in terms of most of the tour boats in Stockholm but certainly not a jet boat or anything like that. While still close to the city we moved really slow so that the tour guide could relate some interesting facts about Stockholm. Kel was less than interested in info about the city, we had been there for four days already and knew a good amount. After about twenty minutes of background info we picked up speed and headed off to the nearby islands.

It turns out that very, very close to downtown Stockholm are tons of islands which vary in size from ones that can house thousands to ones that can house less than a hundred. Some of the bigger islands are actually used as suburbs of the city with people commuting daily to go to work.

The ones that are really pretty are the islands slightly further from town. These islands are used, for the most part, as summer vacation destinations for locals. Kel, in particular, fell in love with this part of Stockholm. These islands are very similar to much of the coastal landscape in and around where she grew up in Massachusetts. Even the architecture is very similar to Martha’s Vineyard with its so called “Gingerbread Houses.”

We got off the boat on the north side of the city instead of waiting the extra fifteen minutes to return to the dock where we had gotten on the boat. We were both pretty hungry and Kel was interested in the sights she missed while I was running around taking pictures a few days earlier. We ended up walking through Kungstradgarden, the large square that used to be a park the King used for growing food. We stopped and got a cheap lunch (turns out that eating closer to the business district is the way to save money) of Asian food done slightly Swedish. Since the menu was completely in Swedish, ordering was a bit of a crap shoot but we both ended up enjoying our food.

That afternoon was spent back in the hotel. I had a bunch of blogging to do, including writing the first half of this blog. Kel sat and read and enjoyed resting. Later that evening we had some decent Italian food back in old town closer to the Nobel Museum which we had visited a few days before.

All around our stay in Sweden was pretty nice despite some rain. There is more than enough to do here to keep you busy for at least a couple of days. I would certainly recommend coming here if you are coming to this part of the world.

Off to Estonia

The next morning we packed up for our early afternoon flight east to the capital of Estonia, Tallinn. This formerly Soviet country has passed hands many times since the 1300s. First owned by the Danish, it was sold to Sweden, then taken over by Russia. In the early 20th century Estonia gained its independence just in time for the Germans to take over in WWII and after that, for the Soviets to take Estonia back into the Russian empire. Finally, with the fall of the Soviet Union, Estonia gained its independence again in 1991.

The short one hour flight and one hour time change had us showing up in Tallinn at around 4pm on sunny Thursday afternoon. It’s amazing how much weather can affect your view of any place you are visiting. Thanks to all the rain in the past few days we are very susceptible to weather induced lenses through which we see the world around us. During the rain the world appears bleak and a place seems dull while on a sunny day, like the one we showed up in Tallinn, everything in the world seems great.

We took a quick cab to our hotel and checked in only to find that our room was on the 6th floor, had no air conditioning and drapes that didn’t close. The room was hot and sunny which is not conducive to a good night’s sleep. Since the sun sets for only a few short hours here this meant that it would not only be hot in the room but would be sunny most of the night as well.

After a quick bout of complaining from me, we decided to take a view around town and get some pictures in the daylight (you never know when it might rain in this part of the world so it’s better to get pictures when you can). Kel and I both realized that things might get better in the hotel room after we had walked around town awhile and got some dinner.

Our walk through town took us all over Tallinn’s Old Town, one of the best preserved ones in this part of the world, and took a bunch of pictures. An hour or so into walking we both realized we were famished. While 6pm is pretty early to eat up here in Scandinavia, we had eaten no lunch. Having left our hotel in Stockholm at noon and arrived at our hotel in Tallinn at 4:30pm, we both agreed that it would be better to wait as long as possible before eating so that we could eat dinner.

We chose a garlic restaurant just off one of the main squares in Old Town, figuring that any restaurant that specialized in garlic would make us very happy. Dinner was our first run in with the huge number of Russian tourists in this part of the world. It’s a little premature for me to make this judgment but I may have to revise my previous call about the rudest travelers in the world. Based on prior experience Kel and I agreed that French travelers can often (not always) be some of the rudest travelers we’ve ever met. It seems that Russians may hold the distinction of being even ruder than some of the French we’ve seen.

(Quick Caveat: Whenever I make judgments like this I like to point out that I am very quick to revise my beliefs about people and never judge an individual based on one of these stereotypes. Not all French travelers are bad, we’ve met some really great French people on our travelers. Likewise, I am sure that not all Russians are bad. It just seems that a higher percentage of these particular people are more likely to be nasty to others around them, especially defenseless service people like waiters and shopgirls. Enough explaining, time to move on with the blog.)

In this particular situation we sat in a restaurant one table away from a group of four Russians and one little girl who was about 4 or 5 years old. We really didn’t pay any attention to this group until one of the men at this table, about my age, began complaining loudly about not getting his food. This caught our attention more because of the tone and loudness with which he used to complain.

Ok, no big deal, maybe it was an isolated instance and, of course, we all get frustrated sometimes. The his food came and after a few minutes the waiter proceeded to ask them how their food was. The usual response in this situation is, “fine,” or, “not great,” or even, “I don’t really like it,” But this guy had to go so far as to be really rude and unnecessary. His response, “It’s actually okay, we expected it to be worse.” It’s hard to convey the arrogance and nastiness in this guy’s voice as this statement came out. It was purely a malicious statement. We are not overly sensitive people but both of our mouths dropped when he said this because it was just so nasty and the waiter was so nice.

The rest of the meal was uneventful with the exception that the group let their daughter wander freely throughout the meal. Since they hadn’t bought her any food I guess that they wanted her to entertain herself. In order to entertain herself she sat in a chair next to our table (about three feet away) and stared at us while we ate. Knowing that talking to her would only make things worse, we just ignored her while we enjoyed our meal.

Our food was pretty decent and much cheaper than it would have been in any of the other Scandinavian countries. Estonia has more in common with Eastern Europe which is considerably cheaper than Scandinavia. Maybe we’ll be lucky and we’ll be able to save some money when we get to Eastern Europe because Scandinavia takes a serious chunk out of the wallet.

On our way back from dinner Kel spotted an area set up for archery by one of the Old Town walls. Two high school kids, in Robin Hood-ish costumes, were running a carnival sort of prize booth. For a few bucks you could shoot arrows at a target. If you were good enough you could win shots of liquor. Kel not only talked me into shooting the arrows but she even got me to wear one of the funny cloaks myself, the things we do for funny pictures on the blog. The arrows were crooked and the bow not the best but it’s still always fun to shoot arrows. I was decent but not great. As the pictures show I was concentrating very hard. The kids were nice and told me I did better than most but I think they were just being kind.

After the fun archery, we returned to our hotel only to find that it was still hot and bright in our room at 10pm. We decided, for the second time in Scandinavia, to move on to another hotel. We went downstairs and had a chat with the hotel manager. We hate moments like this because we were both brought up to be respectful and non-confrontational. I told the manager that we had been lead to believe that there was A/C in our room and that we were pretty particular about sleeping in a room that was at least close to cool. She was very nice and only charged us a partial fee. Feeling much better about our circumstances we shouldered our packs and walked the mile and a half to our new hotel which was much nicer.

Well, enough from us on this end. Hope you guys back home are happy and healthy!

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Photos

Archipelago Tour
Photo By: Kelley Turner

Archipelago Tour
Photo By: Kelley Turner

Archipelago Tour
Photo By: Kelley Turner

Archipelago Tour
Photo By: Kelley Turner

Archipelago Tour
Photo By: Kelley Turner

Archipelago Tour
Photo By: Kelley Turner

Archipelago Tour
Photo By: Michael Turner

Archipelago Tour
Photo By: Michael Turner