What a weekend!
After a couple of marmalade martinis with work colleagues after work on Friday, I trundled off home to finish packing for Stockholm and get an early night. Unsuccessfully. Thus began my long weekend of lots of fun and not lots of sleep.
Somehow I managed to get up and dressed in time for my 3am cab on Saturday morning. Yes people, at 3am I was leaving home, not getting home. I picked up Mark (aka Sparky) and Rebecca (aka Bec) and then we headed out to Stanstead.
Sparky had given me a heads up that Bec is the best person to travel with, as she is uber organised, and she didn’t disappoint. Bec had the airline booking number saved on her phone, her toiletries already packed in a clear ziplock bag, knew the best place to have a little breakfast snack, picked up some cheap duty free vodka, got us a prime position at the gate, and then saved us a great seat on the plane with plenty of room for our luggage. All Mark and I had to do was sit back and wait to wake up properly.
After two hours we landed in the middle of nowhere Sweden beside a tin shed – Vasteras airport. There’s not much to say about Vasteras as there wasn’t much to Vasteras. Apparently “customs” is the word they use to describe the hallway from passport control to the front door.
We caught the big gay bus (decorated with rainbow stripes) to the centre of Stockholm, dropped off our bags and then headed out for some traditional Swedish meatballs with
cowberry and a bit of tacky souvenir shopping. Then it was back to the hotel for a rest, shower, and more than a litre of vodka before we hit the town.
The first stop was a cosy little bar in the Old Towne, where we just missed the live music and paid the equivalent of £9 or $20 for a vodka, lime and soda. After this we headed out to find some fun and, thanks to the advice of a random bouncer, we found it on the
Lady Patricia! Lady Patricia is the funnest boat I have ever been on – three levels of different music and bars and funny Swedish people. We found a live band playing down one end and it was like someone hit the boogie switch, because the three of us literally walked into the room and started rocking out. The evening was a blur of sneaky drinks from Bec’s makeshift hip flask, new friends, poor English, expensive cab rides, lying to the concierge, embarrassing photos, and a hell of a lot of fun!
We somehow managed to drag our sorry butts down to breakfast on Sunday morning, but needed a little nap afterwards to brace ourselves for the cold and steel our nerves for the boat cruise. Hangovers in tow, we took a cruise around the archipelago and saw such amazing sights as the frozen waterfall, the Tivoli Gardens theme park, lots of yellow and orange coloured buildings, the house of a media magnate, some museums, and other interesting things. To be honest, I don’t remember much of the commentary (apart from the guide weaving his autobiography into it) because I was freezing. The rest of the day was great though – we did some more shopping, had dinner at the Boefheus (beef house), watched the most hilarious
game show in Swedish, and enjoyed the falling snow.
Monday saw us all feeling a little more chipper, so after another great buffet breakfast (apart from when I set the toaster on fire) we went to a nearby park and mucked around in the snow, before heading to
Skansen outdoor museum. Skansen “is the first open air museum and zoo in Sweden and is located on the island Djurgården in Stockholm. It was founded in 1891 by Artur Hazelius (1833-1901) to show the way of life in the different parts of Sweden before the industrial era.” I can only assume that Skansen is a bit like
Sovereign Hill in Victoria, however all of the buildings were shut so I can’t be sure. That didn’t really matter, as we had a fantastic time walking around the old buildings in the snow, imagining what life would have been way back then, whilst taking photos on our digital cameras and drinking our Red Bulls. Sparky was a brilliant model, pulling any pose and climbing on any structure that Bec and I requested him to. The animals were the best part – reindeer, seals, bison, and brown bears. It doesn’t sound that exciting, but it was a bit of action in an otherwise rather quiet place. Our final hours in Stockholm were spent doing some more gift shopping, with some tapas and drinks in the Barcelona bar (very multicultural of us) before heading back to the airport.
London welcomed us back with a cold bitch slap and a long and tiring train ride to Liverpool Street, where we splurged on a cab home and declared it a spectacularly fun weekend!
