We are leaving tomorrow morning for Budapest. It's going to be a long train ride. I am also currently drinking..or trying to drink...this Czech Beer called Pardal, which is apparently brewed by the people or something. I don't know. Mia got beer with a goat on it yesterday and it was significantly better than this one. Anyway, back to where I last left off, Stockholm Sweden.
Our stay in Stockholm was the only stop we made where we actually got an excursion with NCL. Although we were doing Stockholm on our own (which is coincidentally the name of the excursion we got), the ship ported in Nynansham (or something like that), which is about an hour away from Sweden. We could have trained/bused/drove ourselves like we did in Wernemunde/Berlin, but we felt like it'd just be easier and less stressful to have the chartered bus take us directly to the city. In any case, this meant that in order to get to Stockholm through our excursion, we had to be out by 7 and up by 5:30. It was quite painful, but at least we knew we had a long bus ride to look forward to.
Because we had not docked directly at the port, we also had to take a tender to shore. That was fun. The area that we ported in, from what we saw at least, seemed pretty. Well, everything was nice except for that Chevron factory or refinery or whatever that greeted us as we woke up.
The bus ride was shorter than I thought it would be, but I got a decent nap out of it. It dropped us a little outside of the old town area of Stockholm. The initial plan was that we were going to tour Old Town for a bit, go to the Vasa Museum, and then go to our appointed reservation for the Absolut Ice Bar before heading back to the bus and ship. The person who acted as our "guide" for the 45/50 minute drive told us that whatever we do, we should definitely not go to the Vasa Museum in the morning, so we were also a little hesitant about our itinerary. This led to some disagreements about the decided path for the day, but we eventually decided that the one thing that everyone wanted to see (or was told they wanted to see) was the Vasa Museum, so we should get that out of the way, despite the ominous warnings we got from that guide.
It was a bit of a walk to the Vasa Museum, but it was a pretty scenic one. I wasn't sure what to expect from Stockholm (although we jokingly said that all of Sweden would look like an Ikea), but it looked more like what I had imagined Copenhagen would look like. My image of Copenhagen was more in the lines of that one strip of the Nyhavn Harbor, because that's what you see in all of the pictures, but that was only one very small part of the city. Stockholm, or at least the Stockholm that we saw on the way to the Vasa, was much more like that harbor. We walked by lines of boats, owned by both tour groups and locals. Unlike the previous two gray days we had, the sun was shining. It was nice to have weather like that for once.
Eventually, we made it to the Vasa Museum and went inside. For those of you unfamiliar with the Vasa Museum, it's a museum dedicated to one very old ship (from the 17th century, I think). It was kind of like an ego booster for the king at the time because he wanted his fleet to compete with other major nations. The Vasa, however, only made it about 20 minutes on its maiden voyage before sinking. Basically, a ship full of fail. Nevertheless, it's one of the cool things to see in Stockholm. It's incredibly well preserved. The details of the designs on the ship were quite impressive. A lot of the original wood is still on the ship and it was quite enormous.
It took us several hours to wander around and take the ship in. We also watched one of the videos on the ship to learn more about the history of it as well as the restoration process. The museum was cool over all, except I think we were just barely missing a lot more of the more interactive features of the museum that they were working on adding to the museum.
One thing to note is that while the woman on the bus warned us not to go to the Vasa Museum in the morning, it was actually relatively empty when we made it there around 10. It wasn't until 12/1-ish, when we were leaving (and also when she recommended we go) that it became packed and every other NCL tour group entered the museum. Vasa style fail? Perhaps. Because we did not have Swedish crowns with us, we also decided to eat in the Vasa Museum's cafeteria, where we knew that we could at least charge our meal on a card. Chris was happy because he could try his Swedish meatballs (which were really good). Mia and I also tried Swedish beer, which while not as boring as the Carlsberg we had in Denmark, wasn't particularly exciting.
After leaving Vasa, we still had about an hour and a half before our reservation at the Ice Bar. This left us with not quite enough time to do a quick tour of old town, but enough time that we would be awkwardly early to the hotel. We walked back along the road that took us to the Vasa Museum and eventually because Mia had to urgently use the restroom, our answer was decided for us. It was a bit of fun trying to figure out how to get to the ice bar. Chabba's app claimed that the ice bar would be a 45 minute walk, so we were going to take the bus until we realized we did not have enough Swedish crowns to make it to the ice bar and back on the bus. Then, after asking someone, we learned that the ice bar was really only 15 minutes away. GPS fail.
After some circling aroung Stockholm, we eventually found where the hotel and ice bar were. The lines of tour buses outside of the pretty nondescript hotel should have cued us into this earlier, but whatever. We were also there like 20 minutes before our reservation, but we didn't mind so much because at least we found a restroom.
The ice bar we were visiting was the first permanent ice bar ever made. Throughout the year, it stays at a steady temperature of 23 F and, being that it is the Absolut Ice Bar, serves Absolut Vodka. It took forever to get into the bar. They weren't quite so organized. They let us in 15 minutes late because the group before us decided not to come out on time or something. And while there was a line when we first got there, there were so many other groups trying to push ahead of us because they were convinced that those of us in line were the only people who were trying to get into this reservation-only bar without our 1:30 reservation, that the area was kind of crazy around 1:45. Ugh. You'd think they'd be more organized.
Anyway, you have to wear giant smelly ponchos and gloves to go into the bar. Even then, it's still ridiculously cold inside. The inside of the bar was pretty cool, but it was a lot smaller than I thought it'd be. We tried to rush to the bar to beat the crowds of people who started taking pictures, but the group of crazy Austrialians in front of us were ordering a lot of drinks. The way admission into the bar works is that the reservation bought your way into the ice bar for 45 minutes and also got you a free vodka or non-alcoholic drink. Mia's drink was really good. Chris and I got ours because it had lingonberry juice in it. James and Jimmy got some non-alcoholic drink that was apparently delicious and while we tried to get something good for Halmony, it ended up being unbelievably sour. Our drinks came in ice cups, which were kind of cool. When people are done with them, they just collect them and slush them up. We drank our drinks and took a few more pictures before leaving with 15 minutes to spare in our reservation. All in all, I'm glad I finally tried it out, but it wasn't really an exciting experience and if you are in Stockholm with limited time, I think the time is better spent exploring the very beautiful city.
Once we got out, we really didn't have much time before some of the last buses back to the ship left. Therefore, we did a very rushed tour around Old Town before hopping onto the ship. I tihnk we also bought one thing of ice cream and shoveled it down to use up the last of the crowns that Chabba had gotten. Old Town was cute, but it wasn't as exciting as Old Town in Tallinn or anything. I actually thought that the more modern parts of Stockholm were a little more charming. The Old Town was just super touristy really. All we saw were crowds and tourist shops. I think that a longer visit might have allowed us to see more of the area. It was nice, but just not as exciting as the rest of the city.
The bus ride back to the ship seemed shorter than the ride there and while there appeared to be a long line for the tenders, it actually moved pretty fast. Once we were back on the ship, we grabbed a quick bite to eat before running around doing our usual routine. We lost at trivia, Played some epic games of hearts as well as some Scrabble. We had dinner up in the buffett area before heading down to watch Chris lose some more money at craps, play some Machievelli, grab some casino cookies and go to bed.
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