This is our first time flying Norwegian and I wasn't sure what to expect. I was so worried Chelsea would overpack that I even paid extra so we could check bags, which makes me cringe to think about. Turns out her pack was the smallest out of the three! I still haven't figured that one out yet but kudos to her for bruising my ego :) The plane was brand new and had all kinds of fancy features. They even have you watch a five minute video about how amazing it is before you take off. The 9 hour flight went pretty well (save for a twenty minute delay thanks to some idiot that got "lost") and you'd never know it was Chelsea's first time on a plane. Sure the seats barely reclined and the spawn of Satan had taken up residence a few rows away in the form of an obnoxious two year old, but that's kind of par for the course anymore, isn't it? All of our bags came through (phew!), and we picked up our Stockholm Card with no problems. It's pretty great: you pay a set price and it lets you take the boats, metro, trams and trains whenever you want, plus you get into just about every museum in the city. I don't know if we'll use it enough to justify the cost, but I've found that I explore more when I have a card like this. I'd never actually pay to get into the creepy old biology museum with kittens in mason jars, but if it's free with the card, why not? I've stumbled onto some pretty great stuff that way (and I'm not talking about the kittens...) Card in hand we wandered around until we found the metro station and headed down for the oh-so-easy process of getting a train into the city. One train came, then another, and then another. But none of the names or destinations looked right. We paced around the station, looking for maps that would help us figure things out. Finding one only made us even more confused. We spent a solid half hour wandering in the same hundred square feet, with me getting more frustrated every minute. My magic phone (which was supposed to work flawlessly everywhere we went) refused to find a network so we had no way of looking up the info online. We had to go back into the airport and ask for directions three different times. They must have thought we were complete morons! It just didn't make sense. Getting from the airport to the city should be easy, right? It turns out our big problem was that we thought we were in a certain metro station but in reality we were on the other side of the planet. Once we finally figured out where we were everything clicked and we got to the hostel in half a hour. Sorry Swedes; I guess we're the idiots. The hostel is fantastic! It costs more than a basic hotel in the US, but that's Scandinavia. The dorm is mostly empty so we have the room almost to ourselves, and pretty much every person we've met speaks perfect English. You can get by no matter where you go, which takes some pressure off. People are very friendly and happy to help you find your way around or order food. All of us were tired from the pretty sleepless flight, but it was the afternoon here and the trek to the hostel had woken us up. We threw our stuff in the massive dorm lockers and started walking. Apparently 7-11 is pretty popular because we have seen at least twenty of them. Of all the US stores that might make the jump to Sweden, 7-11 was a bit unexpected. It was a long walk into the Old Town, but we kind of figured out the lay of the land by going on foot instead of taking the metro. I had absolutely zero anticipation built up for Stockholm and expected it to be pretty boring, but it has really blown me away. The architecture is unique and incredibly varied. The skyline is full of beautiful spires, turned green over time. The language seems quirky and fun; we can figure out what many signs say because they sometimes look really similar to English, just with ten extra letters thrown in :) The Old Town is particularly beautiful. The cobblestone streets and narrow alleys always lead to something new and interesting. You can basically jump from one historical sight/monument to the next just by sight; no map required. In that respect it's a lot like Paris. Even some of the main buildings have a very Parisian feel, which we have since found out was intentional. Unfortunately we're discovering that just about all the museums close at 5pm so we didn't get to see very much yesterday. What we did see gave us some great memories though. We stumbled onto the Stockholm City Museum, which, as its name suggests, chronicled the history of the city. It was way less interesting than it sounds. The exhibits were interesting, but in all the wrong ways. One giant exhibit wall was dedicated to a single spray paint can that had been used to paint graffiti in 2001. Wow, get out your cameras! Pphhh. Another part of the museum focused on the seedier side and talked about Stockholm's apparently very involved history with crime. We came into a room with three little old ladies knitting at a table. I thought we had stumbled into an off limits area or something, but one of them greeted us and happily explained what they were doing. The walls in the room were covered with handicrafts, which wasn't very interesting until we started looking at them a bit more closely. Imagine a sweet old grandma saying the following with her crochet needles in hand, "we make handicrafts based on the themes of the exhibit. Those over there are about gang rape and incest. These are about prostitution and drugs." It was the strangest and most awkward (for me) conversation I've ever had with someone over 70. They were all smiles and clearly wanted to talk, but the three of us politely moved on to the next exhibit before we cracked up laughing at the bizarre encounter. The rest of that museum was a bust. The hilarious and wildly open grandmas were the highlight. By that time 24 hours without sleep was starting to catch up to us and we looked for a restaurant to get a cheap meal. You could definitely blow through some serious cash here if you wanted to, but it's very possible to eat on a budget, which was a pleasant surprise after all the crazy high costs I had read about online. I was figuring $35 per person per day on food, but we can get away with less. Maybe we'll bank it and splurge a little down the road. We found a restaurant close to the hostel that had no English on the menu. That was fun until we needed to order and had no idea what to choose. Our waitress, who speak English as well as any of us, saved the day. We all got something unique and out of the norm, but by then we were so tired it hurt to chew. Fortunately the hostel was a short walk away and we trudged back to it to de-stinkify in the shower and collapse into bed. No alarm clocks please; we need to sleep! Everything was great until around 1 in the morning when some guy on the top bunk started snoring so loud you might have confused him with a wounded elk. Aargh! It was so frustrating. Eventually I was so tired my brain just turned off and it didn't matter anymore. We took it slow this morning and spent some extra time in the shower to scrape away the grime. We have gloriously hot water! Thank you Europe, you shouldn't have. You know you've cheaped out on trips one too many times when hot water is a luxurious perk :) Our Stockholm Card included a free bike tour of the city. I've always thought these things were pretty dumb but I am determined to make this card pay for itself so we decided to give it a shot. By the time we were done with breakfast we had half an hour to get into town and find the bikes. My phone still isn't working (which means no Google maps) so the fact that we found the place in time is downright amazing; we've just about got this place figured out. Our group was pretty large and it was sometimes hard to keep up because we were constantly cutting through traffic and stop lights. Chelsea had a pretty hard time keeping pace with everybody but it worked out great; I could hit it hard at the front while Brittany had an excuse to take it easy and keep Chelsea company. I have a whole new appreciation for bike tours and would definitely be up for doing it again. So many people get around on bikes as it is that you never feel out of place and we covered way more ground than we would've on foot. The guide taught us so much about buildings that we had carelessly walked past just yesterday, and thanks to her we know where to head first tomorrow. Right after the bike tour we started walking to the museum that was on the top of our must-see list: the Vasa. We picked up a French hot dog on the way (man I love those things) and then passed through numerous climate-controlled rooms to get to the holy grail of shipwrecks (well, Swedish shipwrecks anyway). The Vasa was a massive war ship built in the early 1600's. It was resplendent in every way and the King made sure it was decked out to the 9's. Every inch of it was covered in hand-painted sculptures and vibrant colors. It was supposed to intimidate neighboring countries, but a not-so-tiny miscalculation of the amount of ballast required to keep the thing above water meant that it sank to the bottom of the bay less than twenty minutes after starting its maiden voyage. I would NOT have wanted to be the guy that told the King the bad news. D'oh! The ship sat underwater for 333 years before being raised up, conserved, and put on display. I saw plenty of pictures of it before going but I had no idea it was so large. The museum is really first class. They delve into the mechanics of salvaging the ship and preserving what they found. At first I thought the divers that raised it were brave, but then we saw how they salvaged the cannon hundreds of years ago. We got a picture of the old-school diving suit, which is basically a steel bucket over your head that held some air. No thanks! On the lower level of the museum they have the skeletons of the people that died when it sank. Apparently they can tell an awful lot about a person for their bones, and it was all pretty fascinating for me and Brittany (I think Chelsea got a bit bored after dead guy #3). I could write about this for an hour but just google the thing and you'll see how cool it is. We were definitely not disappointed! After the Vasa museum we walked next door to another incredibly beautiful building that now houses a fashion museum. We went in just because we had the pass and are glad we didn't pay. The building was way more interesting than anything inside, unless you don't mind paying to see floor after floor of hideous clothes. I was a little bummed to learn that it was only a hundred years old (it looks way older than that) because I love imagining what its walls have seen, but it's still older than most of what we have in the states. Just down the road from the fashion museum is the oldest theme park in Sweden. It's no Disney World, but they have an enormous set of swings that spin in a circle and go hundreds of feet in the air. You must get an incredible view of the city! We wanted to go pretty bad but couldn't justify spending fifty bucks to ride a swing. Curse you budget! Right next to the themepark is the ABBA museum. We took some pretty great pictures around the gift shop with Mamma Mia blasting in the background. Say what you will about the band, but those songs get into your head and WILL NOT leave! I'm still humming Super Trouper hours later... For our last stop of the day we headed to an absolutely hideous TV tower. You can take an elevator 30 stories up and see the city all around. We should have gotten on a bus and rode it all the way to the tower's front door, but we weren't that smart. We got on the bus for a whopping two stops, and (for reasons still not fully agreed upon) got off. We then walked at least another mile or two to the tower, and used our time at the top to talk about how much we dreaded making our way back to the hostel. Walking ALL day really wears you out, as pathetic as that sounds. The view was nice but I expected more. I thought it would be like seeing Dublin from the top of the Guinness Storehouse, but it's too far out of downtown to give you that in-depth and intimate feel of the place. We finally left before the sun went down and made a quick pit stop at the grocery store on our way into town. A little pasta, bread and cheese in the hostel kitchen saved us some cash. I was even able to get a beer. It was the only one with no English on it (did you know they have Brooklyn Lager here?) which made it interesting. Unfortunately interesting doesn't mean good. Chelsea's instant reaction of disgust after taking a sip was pretty priceless :) We still haven't figured this out yet but when we walked in the door my bed was made and my bed sheet is gone. If you sleep on their bed without one of those they whack you with a 500SEK fine, and the reception is closed. I have no way of finding out what happened to my stuff and I now have no sheets. Hopefully I can get it sorted out tomorrow but man they better not fine me! Our museum guide says there's an aquarium around here where you can "hug a snake and pat a spider". That right there was enough to guarantee a visit and it'll be our first stop tomorrow. What happens if the snake hugs back?