*Disclaimer – This is written for my memory in the years to come and for the nosey folk. I don’t blame you if you get bored after the first paragraph *

Our holidays/nights out/nights in never go to plan. We can organise until the cows come home and something completely simple will knock us off our tracks every time. This time it was completely forgetting our printer had ran out of ink after failing to print out the directions to out camp site in France during last summer along with the usual mistake of ‘leaving Nairn alone in the living room for more than two minutes and expect the room to be still standing’. We’d managed to get my parents to watch the kids until Vonnie’s dad arrived after work when he would watch them until Thursday night where Dave would take over until we got home later that night. That side of things worked out really well.

So Tuesday morning came and the only printout we had was the itinerary for the flight. We still needed the bus tickets and the hotel information printed out as well as the boarding passes after we checked in online. I tried the printer and it wasn’t for working so the plan was to go to the town centre, pick up a few last minute things, get home in time for my parents turning up and then swing by my work to borrow thier printer on the way to the airport. We ended up running late at the shopping centre, almost missing my parents as we had left our mobile phones charging in the house and hadn’t even packed our bags.

Eventually we left and swung by my work where folk were surprised to see me and ended up being rather scared as the things I needed to print out were not printing. I hit the desk and battered the keyboard and that didn’t work so I eventually searched the entire office and found everything had printed out on a different printer. Cue much relief from myself and much laughter from everyone else. I wasn’t until we were halfway to Prestwick that I realised that as we had printed out our check in details less than four hours before the flight we’d have to check in normally and that was going to add extra time on to our already tight schedule. It turned out there wasn’t a queue when we arrived anyway so everything went fine from that point onwards. Well when I say everything was fine but our dinner at the airport had sat under a heat lamp for the best part of the day and when the plane landed it bumped several times frightening the hell out of most of the passengers. If it wasn’t for the prerecorded fanfare that played seconds after the last bump I thought we were going to have to go around and try again.

So we stood outside and waited for the bus to Stockholm and learned our first lesson about the trip. It was going to be cold.

The bus turned up and after thinking it would be a great idea to catch the front seats we realised there was a huge crack in the windscreen that was easily 6-7′ in length and you could hear the wind whistle though it as you drove along. The journey was uneventful except for a sighting of an IKEA store and an Englishman talking to a Swedish person about living in Scotland. Okay okay it was really uneventful.

When we got off the bus we learnt our second lesson of the trip. It was going to be very expensive.

The taxi journey could not have been more than 3-4 minutes of driving. It was basically over a big long bridge and down onto the quayside. It cost us 12Kr which is about £10-12 or something like that depending on where you get your exchange rates. That wasn’t even the driver doing us out of money because we were tourists! Now as with most hotels the reception shuts at 11pm and the front door gets locked so guess what time we get there at? Thats right, 11.03pm. Anyway after after ringing teh bell a few times we got checked in and found out that the hotel/boat we were staying on wasn’t the one we thought it was going to be. Ours was to be the rear half of the top deck on the smaller boat moored in front of the main hotel.This was great in that we had free access to the room at any time and didn’t have anyone stomping past our front door at stupid am but it did mean having to go between boats to get breakfast each morning.. Anyway the bed was shouting for us so we left it at that.

Day 1
Considering how late we had eventualy arrived, checked in, unpacked and collapsed at we were up really early for breakfast. Our first real day away from the kids and we don’t even get a lie in. We jumped next door for a nice breakfast. After our ‘incident’ with the taxi meter we filled up with 3 courses of breakfast. I say we but I really mean myself. A bowl of granola with fresh yoghurt, apple puree and milk for round 1. Two slices of bread with a couple of slices of cheese and smoked ham on each and a boiled egg to top it off. Lovely. Which reminds me, possibly the strangest sight I think I’ve ever seen greeted us as we left our boat to get breakfast. This little old woman dressed in about 7 layers of clothing walked past with a macaw sitting on her wrist. WTF?

Our destination to start the Day was an open air museum called Skansen. Now this would cause some problems as not only was it on another island from the one we were on (Stockholm’s all about the islands) but we were also a different island from where the ferry left from. Grabbing a map from the foyer we headed off to try and get across to the ferry. I hadn’t really noticed it the night before but almost everywhere you look in Stockholm there are cranes throwing up buildings at the moment. It doesn’t matter where you look but there will always be some sort of building work going on. So anyway we had to follow a slight detour away from the main path thanks to an aforementioned building site and found ourselves in the cycle lane which was interesting. I don’t know what it is with Sweden but they seem to like making life confusing when it comes to junctions and bridges. The bridge we were aiming for actually started its junction half way across the water and so by the time the road reached the land there were 6 roads coming, a mess of paths and underpasses and to top it off they had a metro station under it all as well. After taking a wrong turn and ending up under a stinking fishmonger’s van we eventually made it to the ferry ‘port’. After our taxi encounter I thought we would get fleeced on the ferry but it turns out it’s really cheap in comparison. I think it cost something like £3 each way per person which would probably have been nearer £30 each way by taxi. The island that Skansen is on also has the city’s fairground as well as the more expensive hotels and homes. When you get off the boat you walk through edge of the fairground which at this time of year looks like a movie set. Everything seems just fake enough to look at home on a back lot.

Skansen is somewhere I think the kids would love although you really need to go at high season to get the most from it. In January most of the site is closed off and there is currently a lot of work being done on the zoo area with new walkways and enclosures being built. I loved the place but with it being on an exposed hill during one of the coldest months and my wife being pregnant you can understand why we didn’t spend all day there. We wandered around the old buildings until we started to hit the farm animals and the zoo. The chickens they keep there had me entertained for ages as they just wander around the park rather than being locked up in a pen. The cockerel turned up at one point with his harem in tow and was a right wee bossyboots. The one thing we wanted to see was the talk about the owls but the map put a large red sticker over an area that had loads of wee paths and an enclosure marked owls which when we got there was completely empty. I think Vonnie got a little dejected by this and decided to start making her way back down the hill.

I stayed to have a quick look at the wolves and wolverines and have another look for the owls. As with the bears the wolverines were nowhere to be seen but the bears had an excuse to be in bed and yet again I felt bad after see the wolves in an enclosure constantly pacing around the perimeter. Through a stroke of luck I chose to head back down the hill via a different route and came across another owl enclosure which was where the talk was actually being held so I gave Vonnie a quick phone and we headed back down there. The enclosure is actually a walk in aviary housing two adult great grey owls and while the keeper was feeding them and giving his talk they come right down and sit on the walkway banister. If they didn’t have such huge claws you could put your hands out and pet them! The look on Vonnie’s face when they appeared was tremendous as she has a little thing about owls.

By this time Vonnie was in a lot of pain with her hips so we headed back down to the front gates and on the way the couple in front of us met a squirrel. You might not think much of that but when I say met I mean the squirrel jumped off the fence and climbed up onto the guys shoulder before running back down as his partner squirmed. We lucked out and wasn’t greeted in the same manner but the japanese couple behind us were. The guy was wearing a jacket with a parka style hood and the squirral loved that fur. We stopped off at the tobacco and matchstick museum for a hot chocolate and decided that although it was still early we’d callit a day and head back to the hotel.

We eventually made it back and Vonnie went for a lie down while I went back out into the old town to find a few shops we wanted to visit as well as pick up a few bits and pieces. I hate staying in hotels becuase you can’t just pick up a bag of crisps or a bottle of juice usually so my main aim was to find a supermarket and get some essentials along the lines of cakes and soft drinks. I’d also decided to try and find somewhere for Vonnie to get a massage the next day and if I could to find the Grand Hotel which is where the boat tours leave from. Suffice it to say that I got a little lost what with it being a strange city, dark and encountering some sort of rally or protest for a bunch of African people. I ended up walking past the palace where a uniformed soldier accosted me brandishing his rifle as I got a little to close for his liking or at leastI think thats what it was about. I also nearly ended my own life after forgetting to look left first then right when crossing a road after I decided to try the other bridge back across the water. Anyway I found everything apart from the massage parlour place and headed back to the hotel for dinner on the boat’s restaurant. I call it that because thats how the website refers to it. In actual fact you can choose between four dishes, two of which are salads and one of which is a warm sandwich and all are very tasty. We followed that up with cornettos and made for an early night.

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 25th, 2009 at 11:06 am and is filed under Every Day Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.