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| Standing outside City Hall with the Swedish flag blowing in the wind. These are some of the girls I am traveling with! |
Today we got up bright and early to visit City Hall and the Royal Palace in Stockholm. What is nice about Stockholm is that it is an easy 15-minute walk from where we were staying to City Hall and the Royal Palace. City Hall was a beautiful sight to see. We walked to the front of the building where the Swedish flags were blowing in the air and we walked through the doors to a beautiful courtyard. The building was made out of 80,000 bricks and the structure was breathtaking. As we walked through the courtyard, you could see a harbor where ship come in and out.
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| The courtyard at City Hall |
Next, we made our way to the Royal Palace. The Royal Palace did not look like a castle or a palace at all but just another building in Stockholm. We were hoping to watch changing of the guards, but we unfortunately changing of the guards occur during May to September. Changing of the guards is the process involving a new guard exchanging duty with an old guard. We did have the chance to see guards marching around the palace. The guards remind me of our military back at home protecting our land.
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| Guards marching outside the Royal Palace |
Afterwards we had enough time to just walk around “Old Town” Stockholm and go shopping in some of the stores. It is very interesting how I find out every time I look at a price it is in kronor and I convert it to American dollars in order to figure out the actual price we are spending. This trip is a test for me to see how well I can convert money from kronor to U.S. dollars, standard units of measurement to customary units of measurement, standard U.S. time of a.m. and p.m. to military time, and Celsius to Fahrenheit degrees!
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| The Royal Palace |
After all our excitement in Stockholm, we decided to go to Gothenburg (Göteborg), Sweden. Gothenburg is about three hours south of Stockholm by train. We left at 13:14 (1:14 p.m.) from Stockholm and arrived in Gothenburg at 16:30 (4:30 p.m.). Then we had to take a bus to our next hostel. We have not just much tonight but we went to dinner and had another fabulous meal. The eating atmosphere here is different from home! When you go out to a restaurant at home, most of the restaurants are always full and they try to get you in and out as fast as you can. In Sweden, the restaurants are never full and they like to give you time before ordering drinks and dinner. Then after you have received your meal, they wait for a bit to see if you would like dessert or the bill. The Swedish tend to have smaller portions to eat as well. We ordered a basket of mozzarella sticks, jalapeño peppers, and onion rings to share and might I add that there were only 2 of each item for 59 kronor ($9.16 in US money!). We felt that we were shorted by the amount of food we received, but their food is very proportionate for one person to eat. Much different than being at home! Even when some of the girls I am traveling with went into McDonalds and asked for a large coke, they gave them the medium size cup because they had never even heard of a large McDonalds coke!
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| Making our way to Gothenburg by train! |
Tomorrow our plan is to walk around Gothenburg and tour to see the sights it has to offer. I am very excited to learn about Gothenburg! Well it is 12:45 a.m. in the morning on Wednesday, November 2, 2011 and which means it is 6:45 in the evening on Tuesday, November 1, 2011! So, I am off to bed for the evening!
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