We landed in Stockholm at 7 a.m., Monday morning after a night flying across the Atlantic with two children in the seats behind us alternately kicking our seats and playing with their trays--but it's all good on vacation. For the record, the food on Scandanavian Airlines was yummy. After taking the fast train into the city, we stored our luggage in a locker at the bus station and set out to explore Stockholm.
We first went to Gamla Stan which is the oldest part of the city and dates back to the 1
3th century. We walked the cobblestone streets and watched the changing of the guard at the Royal Palace. Stockholm has many museums and with our weary brains decided to only sample one choosing the Nobel Museum dedicated to the 800 Nobel laureats.After walking around for six hours and starting to mumble with exhaustion, we decided that it was time to retrieve our bags and make our way to the ferry terminal. After a few misstep
s, we managed to find our boat 2-1/2 hours before departure giving us time to settle into our cabin and take a long nap before leaving port and heading out to the Baltic Sea. For several hours as we cruised around the islands leading to the open sea, we were in a parade with ships heading to Helsinki or Tallinn, Estonia or Rostock, Germany. After a night of being gently rocked by Baltic waves, we arrived in Riga Latvia this morning.
Two observations so far.
- I think that Europeans have enviable style, hair and body-mass indexes.
- Everyone we run into has enough english to communicate with us but we can barely croak thank you in their language. That embarrasses me.
6 comments:
oooooh....thanks for a peek into your travels, Beth. I LOVE the idea of train and boat travel -- so different from our auto travel in the US...
I'm sure your language knowledge will grow as you listen and learn ;)
Hoping for many more posts....and hearing of your fun --
Just caught up on all the recent posts. Glad you're back...I'd missed them too. And glad you two are having a wonderful time in Europe. Thanks for the pictures.
Beth, what a wonderful vacation so far. I am so happy you are there and sharing it with us. Most Europeans are taught some English in school so don't feel too bad. Have a great time and take lots of pictures!
Makes me want to return to Stockholm. We were there some years ago--and did not have nearly enough time to see all we wanted.
I completely agree on your observations--many Europeans do much more walking, less foolish eating--so they are leaner. And English is de rigeur for them--we should learn from that.
Have a grand grand time.
Glad you all made it safely across the big pond Beth. :c) Can't wait to continue traveling along with you as you explore! Indeed, it is embarrassing that everyone seems to learn a good bit of English, but we... not so much with other languages.
I agree with your observations about Europeans. I feel very inadequate knowing only one language as so many people in the world speak 2 or 3 or more.
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