No Plans, No Expectations

Today was the first day of 4 in Stockholm, Sweden, and since Emily and Sidney both had field labs, I spent the day with a group of girls I met through my classes. Some of the girls I knew better than others, but since it was the first day in a new place, I had plenty of time to get to know them better. No one had anything specific planned for the day (which I’m okay with as long as someone tells me that), so we really just wandered around Stockholm for the majority of the day. The public transportation systems were easier to figure out here than in Russia, thank God, but not knowing how to pronounce the stops the Swedish way made us all sound hilarious. We got Chinese food for lunch, which I should probably be slightly ashamed of because I did not visit Sweden for Chinese food, but it was pretty amazing. It was buffet style, so I know I got my money’s worth in a country that is very expensive to live in.
A view of Gamla Stan from the opposite bank
Love the architecture of this building
 Next up, Old Town. Old town, known as Gamla Stan, is where we spent most of the day. We walked around and did some window and souvenir shopping. A couple of us stopped in a comic book shop, which was fun and yes, superheroes are appreciated all over the world, and later we all got some Swedish ice cream. Because I love food and ice cream is easily in my top five favorite things to eat too much of, I find it necessary to let you know that I had a banana scoop with marshmallows and chocolate in it and a vanilla chocolate chip scoop in a homemade waffle cone. Yum! I also bought my friend Trisha a Swedish goblet so every time she uses it she’ll be reminded of Vikings and Alexander Skarsgård. She’ll love it (update: she really, really loves it). In Old Town I saw a place called Jotun and this made me think of Loki, Norse mythology, the Marvel universe… basically things only an incredible geek would think of when seeing a random sign in Sweden. A round of applause for me please. We also walked on the other side of the river that separates Gamla Stan from other parts of Stockholm and saw some cool ships, one pirate-themed, and it was nice to just, well, be. No plans, no expectations besides seeing what Stockholm had to offer. It was a great day and I’m glad to have spent it with some new friends.
Some Stockholm color
We ALL Scream for Ice Cream!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Tesco is like Narnia

Image
            I’m writing this on my last day in Scotland, a Tuesday if you’re curious, and my friend decided that we absolutely had to go to the Tesco in Greenock, just so she could say that she went to a supermarket that is so quintessentially British. At the beginning of our short excursion we did not have particularly high expectations of Tesco; we thought it would be just like any ordinary American supermarket but with different brands. Once we walked into Tesco though, we realized just how extraordinary it truly was. Tesco, as my friend Emily said, is like Narnia. You walk in curious, but not overly hopeful, only to be completely amazed by what you find inside. Those average, automatic doors hid a wonderland of aisles as far as the eye can see. There were groceries, a deli section, oh, and don’t let me forget the clothes that take up the entire second floor. One of the first things we saw was Tesco’s escalators (not the step kind, the gradual incline t...
Read more

The Russian Orthodox Thigh Master

Image
Be prepared for many pictures...              The third day of Russia was one of the longest, as it consisted of a tour of four of St. Petersburg’s churches: the Holy Trinity Cathedral (along with the Alexander Nevsky Abbey and a Cemetery), Our Savior of the Spilled Blood Church, St. Isaac’s Cathedral, and St. Vladamir’s Cathedral. If you have the chance to visit the Spilled Blood Church, I would advise you to take it! The inside is the most amazing thing. There are floor to ceiling mosaics that show important Biblical figures and famous parables and I wish I could have spent more time inside since I wanted to see each and every gold, mosaic-surrounded image. My other favorite of the day was St. Isaac’s Cathedral. For this church we had the option to either go inside the church or to go up to the colonnade—ascending 262 steps to get there! My friend Sidney and I chose this option, and you may think that 262 steps is no big deal. Let me tell you, i...
Read more

Burr(en) It’s Cold Out Here (Ireland Day 3, Part 2)

Image
           After the Cliffs of Moher Mist it was lunch time so we stopped at Fitzpatrick’s Bar, which is a pub with the most Irish name to ever be Irish. Here I had some amazing seafood chowder and had the chance to get out of the very traditional rainy weather for a while. The next stop was actually my favorite stop: Burren. This is an area by the Ireland coast against the Atlantic Ocean. It’s a huge limestone deposit that has crisscrossing cracks known as “grikes.” In these grikes it is possible to see arctic, Mediterranean, and alpine plants all growing together because of the odd environment. Since the area is full of cracks, walking around on the deposit is almost like playing hopscotch because you have to hop from stone to stone to avoid the cracks. It was amazing because the landscape was something so unlike anything I’d seen before, but, it was also the coldest stop we made. Rain was coming down and there was a chill that even my scarf and rain jac...
Read more