After the deck, we ate and I was quite impressed with the food. Scott and I had a chicken and pasta buffet that was awesome and we ate till we were absolutely stuffed. It was one of the best meals over here. After dinner we just headed to the little nightclub and stayed there for a while. We didn't get to sleep very early and the ship was arriving in Stockholm at 7am. Needless to say we were pretty tired and we were going to spend the entire day in Stockholm.
We took the subway thing they had from the cruise ship into downtown. I have to say that Stockholm is about twice the size as Turku. It is also a lot more stereotypical Europe that Turku is. What I mean by that is it has older looking buildings and tight curvy streets in some parts of downtown. There are two parts of Stockholm, old and new. The new part is where we went first and it is more modern in its stores and layout. In both parts just like in Turku there are not many cars driving but a ton of people walking around.
The old part of town is much more traditional Europe in its architecture and look. We visited the Royal apartments or Royal palace which is where the King of Sweden lives. The palace was really nice and you could walk through the different sections on the outside. It was pretty cool because they had guards all around dressed in blue with guns. I got my picture taken next to one of the guards which is pretty funny.
We walked around the city and shopped the entire day. It was a very nice day and the hottest since I've been in Europe. (Stockholm is a little further south than Turku, but not much). In downtown they had a ton of stores especially little shops for tourists. In one store, Kimi was trying on some jeans or something and he heard some girls speaking English. When he came out and said he thought those girls were from the United States because of their "American accent." It turns out that they were from California visiting family in Sweden. So that was neat to run into other Americans in Stockholm.
They even had an American Food Store, which carried everything from peanut butter to macaroni and cheese to fluff (marshmallow). But since we are in Finland and I should be trying new foods, I didn't buy anything. HOWEVER, for breakfast we had McDonald's breakfast for the first time in Europe and for lunch and dinner #1 we had Burger King. (There is no Burger King in Finland).
Then towards the end of the day we met Clint, who was the American QB for the Trojans last year and is now playing just outside of Stockholm. So we met and talked with him at Burger King. He told stories about last year and we told him some stories from this year. He was a cool guy and has a thick South Carolina accent, which is definitely a first in Europe.
We talked with him for about an hour and then it was time to go back to the cruise ship. On the ship we had dinner #2, which was also really good and then we walked around for a bit. On these cruise ships they can sell goods tax free. I forget all the legal stuff that goes with it but everything is cheaper on the boat than it is in Finland. So we walked around there for a bit and I bought another Finnish CD, which was about 5 euros cheaper than in the stores in Finland. Then we crashed early because we were dead tired from our day in Stockholm.
Overall, it was a sweet trip. I got to visit Sweden and see another city in Europe. It was a bigger city and more traditional Europe than Turku is.
