Fun with friends in Sweden

Sweden is another extremely easy stop for me (and most Americans). I’ve got great friends–Greger & Fran–in Uppsala, everyone speaks English extremely well, and you can even basically read the signs and menus, without any knowledge of Swedish.

My flight from Newark, NJ, was delayed on the ground there for an hour, but the flight itself was easy enough (managed 5 hours of sleep, out of the 7 hour flight). I hopped the train from Arlanda airport to Uppsala, where Greger & Fran live. Greger met me at the airport with their car, as it was raining. We dropped my bags at their flat, and headed out for a walk around town. The rain letup after about 20 minutes, making for pleasant cruising weather. For some reason I didn’t grab my camera, so I don’t have any photos of the now silly-looking “castle” (looks more like a barracks) built on the hill over Uppsala. The hill did offer nice views of the town though.

Greger & Fran live ridiculously close to the town’s major landmark, the Cathedral of Uppsala, as seen in this silly video:

At just shy of 400 feet tall, the cathedral is easy to spot from most places in town, so it makes finding “home” quite easy.

After our stroll around town, I grabbed a quick nap, then we headed out for dinner with Fran. I had a tasty veal patty in brown sauce, with lingon berry compote, and we sampled some brews.

My hosts had plans on Saturday, as it was Fran’s birthday weekend. They headed North out of town, and I caught the train into Stockholm to look around. The weather was much better this day, with mostly sunny skies. I briefly wandered around old-town Stockholm, and then got on a ferry out to one of the thousands of islands that surround Stockholm. My destination, Vaxholm, is a very popular one with locals and tourists alike. The tourist hordes were overwhelming, and I didn’t find anything particularly enchanting about the island, other than the cute Swedish kids singing, as featured in the video below.

I only stayed on Vaxholm for about an hour before catching a ferry back to Stockholm. The time on the boat in both directions was nice, and the highlight of my time in Stockholm. See my Flickr photostream for photos. Greger told me that the Vasamuseet was worth a visit, so I made my way around the harbor to its location. But I arrived just as it was closing (6pm, despite guide book saying 7pm…), so I wasn’t able to get inside. I ended up with some nice views of the city though, so not all was lost.

The train whisked me back to Uppsala, for a lazy solo evening. I found a little cafe near Greger’s, “Caviar”, and had a fantastic grilled swordfish steak on a nice potato salad with spring greens.

I slept in this morning, and dinked around on the computer until Greger & Fran returned in the early afternoon from their adventure. We spent the rest of the day hanging out, including a viewing of The Simpsons Movie at the local theater (Swedish subtitles only improved the hilarity factor of this should-have-been-a-double-episode flick), and sampling some tasty cakes for Fran’s birthday.

Tomorrow morning’s 6:30 wakeup for my 8:30 flight to Tallinn, Estonia is going to come all to soon. It’s been a nice, relaxing weekend here in Sweden. The adventure level starts to ramp up quickly after tonight!

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