Stockholm syndrome

Just about recovered from my weekend in Stockholm with Rob and Vicky. They came out on friday night, taking advantage of a convenient RuinAir flight from Stansted to (Stockholm) Vasteras - I think it was about a 90 minute bus ride away from the city centre, but all seemed to work out ok for them. I jumped on an early morning traing from Linkoping, and met them at the very nice Clarion hotel, at about 10:30 which gave them plenty of time to eat the entire breakfast buffet, and go for a little explore too.

We then set about working away across stockholm's tourist attractions, with a plan to arrive at "The Dubliner" in time to watch the rugby in the early evening. We started off with a wander the Sodermalm, the "cool" bit of the city, had lots of nice little boutique shops, most of which didn't seem to open til the owners had recovered from being out on the lash the night before. We found a delightful coffee place, which we pit stopped at - the swedes are inveterate coffee drinkers, and you generally get a fine brew in all of the ( mainly independent) coffee places.

Then wandered around a little further to a good view point at the edge of Sodermalm. then on, down into Gamla Stan, or the old town... where we popped into the Noble museum for vicks to get some chocolate Nobel Prizes for distribution at work, and also for her to show us piccies of the various winners from Sanger.

We were getting a bit peckish now, so stopped for a little refreshment, LAsagne for me, with rob goign for some traditional Kottbullar ( meatballs), and Vicky a bowl of warming Gulash.

Next up, we took a boat across to the Modern Art museum, which contrary to the Lonely Planet guide wasn't free, but nonetheless had some good stuff - a photography exhibition by Andreas Gursky was probably the stand out thing for me - some of the permanent works were a bit on the pretentious side of sh*t! Not helped by an audio guide straight out of Pretentious Art critques for Dummies.

By this time it was snowing quite heavily and we decided to find somewhere to regroup. We located the dubliner, bu decided that starting to drink there already was a bit too early, so we adjourned to another Cafe for a while, then had a little jaunt into Urban Outfitters, where we laughed at the "build your cat a tank" kit, which I think Vicky quite wanted for Dexter.

finally got settled in for the rugby, which was enlivened by the humour fo having the irsih RTE commentary - which was amazingly one sided.

We ate at the pub after the game had finished, and then headed back to Sodermalm to try out a recommended bar. Eventually heading back to the hotel, where I think Rob wanted to revisit the bar there, but the long day had caught up with me and Vicks, so we called it a night there...

day two in a bit , when I've had some dinner...

Listening: Jools Holland Small World Big BAnd