daytrip to stockholm! and its warm, sort of

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Yay, thats right the last couple of days have been in the positive figures, and infact reached 15 degrees yesterday and today in Örebo it was 11 degrees when i got back from stockholm.
I like stockholm, quite a pretty city, all the buldings seem to be painted in nice yellow and beige colours, with a flash of a burgundy red thrown around the place, and there are rivers or canals absolutly everywhere which are great to look at, and they move really quickly, they almost create a standing wave behind the pylons they crash through on every bridge, and there seem to be locks and dams all over the place to control it or something, couldnt find anywhere to inform me of that fact though, and although i wanted to go for a swim, a) i didnt have my swimmers with me and b) i would have been swept out to see probably as an ice block, as i cant imagine the water being to warm, lol,.. and its really black, strange, all the rivers here are black, not a blue one in sight, not sure why, meh.
After getting off te train i started walking towards a huge steeple from a church and ran straight into His Majesties palace, well i stopped before hitting it but the palace is really big, and all sort of higgledipiggldi, like its been put together all over the place, the buildings are rectangular but the forecourts and places are all sort of off centre, like there's no symmetry to it all, i guess the rivers might play a part in that construction reason, lol.
First thing that told me i was at the palace was the guards, i saw a whole bunch of them getting ready for the changing of the guards, and so watched them get inspected and do their gun throw around thingy, and march with there arms throwing to the sky, and quite a few of them are young, which i learnt is because all boys when they finish school must do 10 months service with the army, and this is a branch of the army, but there were some older blokes there too, just as guards, not sure how they got there, yay. so after they did there inspection thingy i followed them as they marched around the palace or in this bit which was the Royal Apartments, where aparently the king actually lives, yay this place hasa a king, lol, and so i followed and followed till we ended up in this type of square, that really was 2 quarter circle bits joined with a couple of straight sides, hard to explain, and photograph, and i cant draw anyway so you'll just have to pretend to understand, anyway they march in this area, and theres another group of guards waiting, and they do this whole running and marching and yelling and then they start to exchange guard posts, and they have flags out, but no band, and all the guard swaps are dont with yelling which the only word i could understand was guard post or something, and they did this fancy swivel thing to swap places then they march back, its not quite as regimented as the london guards, these guys get to sort of look around abit and look at you face to face and stuff, but they still do the same march from there little box thing if they want to stretch there legs, which is cool to watch. At the end of the swapping bit another army bloke comes out and explains whats going on in swedish then in english, and it was difficult to hear, as the sound system they use isnt that great and the english is heavily acccented, but i did pick up that the unidorms they wear are the same design as what was first used in about 1750 or something, i think thats what he said, i could be wrong.
So after seeing the changing of the guards i went for a walk around what must of been the old city part, as there were really tiny cobblestone streets, some of them only about 2 metres wide or thinner, lined with shops, and the buildings that create these passageways were all like 5 story apartment blocks, that sort of looked a little wobbly, but they didnt fall on me yay! So i got lost through all these little back streets which was great, and then ran into a river, not litterally, and saw what looked like the newr part of town, so wandered across there, and indeed it was your usually city crap, with big shopping centres and some nice gardens, and i ran into a market that was pretty average but the fruit and veg looked really fresh, but like i was going to buy any! HA, 😊 So i got nice and lost around the newer looking area of stockholm and eventually found the train station again, where i had some late lunch and then hopped on the train back to Örebo again, its about a 2 hour train trip, which goes pretty quick, but is really boring with no snow covered fields to look at, and there seem to be a lot of pine forests, kind of like the state forests we have back in nsw,
So that was my day, tomorrow i might go for a walk back down to the lake which i stood on the other day to see how much has melted, and hopefullyit should be substantially warmer than the other day, and sunny!
I'm taking lots of pictures but cant get them on this computer at the moment, so they'll come soon!
thats me for now! the last 2 days have been very relaxing catching up on some sleep and wandering around town, so peaceful!
Love you all!

Benny Hugs

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Comments

[Sparks]

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I love your travel stories Ben! I get these awesome mental images of you just bumbling around these foreign cities, running into important landmarks that you don't know about and being all suprised about everything. Oh and thank you for at least attempting to use paragraphs!