Today was a rest day for R so I was left to explore the city myself a bit. After breakfast at the Hilton Slussen Stockholm Renee headed upstairs to rest and I headed out to explore. 

I walked along the river, Stockholm is between the Baltic Sea and a lake and is composed of islands – as a result you are often close to water – this makes it, combined with the historical building very picturesque. I finally after an hour of walking found the hop on / hop off bus I was looking for so I could do a circuit of a city and see what we might be interested in. 

I passed a Covid Vaccination center where people were strolling into just get shots – no fuss, no muss. So different from the political world of America. 

Stopping off for a quick walk through of  a National Museum I then moved on to taking a bus back towards the hotel. From the bus stop to the Hotel is old town which is filled with alleyways of shops and traffic. Many cafe’s and restaurants spill into the street where people partake of wine, beer and coffee. It’s one of the things I love about Europe – the exotic flavor of multiple accents and languages – I heard Dutch, German, French, Swedish and English frequently. I’ve heard Italian once or twice but the Northern languages are prevalent. I may have heard Danish and Norwegian as well as Swedish but I can’t tell them apart yet. Sweden is not as tidy as Norway – there is some litter but it’s certainly no UK or USA.

On the walk I did find a Lakris store – or Licorice. Licorice is big here and finding an entire store of it was insane – including Licorice soda and Licorice ice-cream. Of course I sat outside and had to eat that, not bad at all. Good thing R isn’t with me because she would have passed for sure. Heathen.

So for the American’s reading – one interesting thing of course is toilets in Europe – if you ever get a European discussing America – it’s like what is with the toilet doors in restrooms why don’t you have full doors? In every bathroom in Europe it is a floor to ceiling door vs the doors in the USA where you can peer over or from the bottom – I’ve had kids stick their heads under before. In the museum I was in – each bathroom (unisex) was it’s own private little bathroom.

I picked Renee up for Burgers at ‘Bastard Burgers’ which is a Swedish burger chain – its not Byrons but still ok. I’m trying to talk R into one of the Meatball restaurants. It is a Swedish thing. As it is, lots of mainland Europeans like to dip their ’fries’ into things other than ketchup – mayonnaise and all manner of things – one restaurant had over 30 dips available. That’s a no from R on that.