Ice Bar’s and Crayfish Party’s and Palace’s… Oh My!

“Yes, I’ll have a Wolf’s Paw please” these are only words one can express at Ice Bar in Stockholm City, where we were Sunday night. After a long and miserable bus ride (I don’t do well sitting for 5 hours) we were back in Stockholm. So of the group were leaving Sunday night and early Monday morning, but Jana, Julia, Naomi, DJ and I all had a few more nights together. After getting settled into our hotels we quickly headed to the Nordic Sea Hotel where we had a fabulous dinner. Julia and DJ had elk stew, and I had the Bookmaker Toast, easily one of the best meals we’ve had here. After diner we hit the Ice Bar right next door. In order to avoid freezing, we geared up with big heavy coats and gloves that they provide, and in we went! The entire bar was made completely of ice, every inch of it. It’s created after a hotel in the north of Sweden that all ice as well. Our drinks were chilled to the perfect temperature, which tends to happen when your drinking out of a cup made from ice. The Wolf’s Paw is Vodka and Lingonberry Juice, it was tart the moment in hit your tongue. We could only handle about 30 minutes until we were annoyingly cold. It was well worth it and the best way to end the evening.

Monday started off with my new favorite breakfast here at the Adlon Hotell. The Brie Cheese and the fresh fruit and yogurt, tomato’s and meats and my absolute favorite is the Swedish Saffron and Pistachio Bread, it never gets old!

Jana, Julia and I hit the streets afterwards to locate the bus station in order to head to Djurgården, an island outside of Stockholm.  Djurgården is home to some famous sites such as Skansen and Vasa Mussette. Our first stop was Skansen, which is an outdoor museum. It has many Scandinavian animals such as reindeer, goats, wolf’s, etc. and shows all the parts of Sweden before the industrial era. We even got to sit down in one of the huts in the Sami Camp. Sitting on the soft reindeer fur comforter and looking around at all the special tools and trinkets they had was very surreal. All the animals were my favorite part, how many people can say they’ve seen a reindeer! We went into several of the shops; one being the general store where one of the available items was fresh hops. If you think it couldn’t get any better than hops, the bakery was right down the road… it was full of steam in order to get the dough to rise. The cinnamon pretzel was so satisfying.

After Skansen we had lunch at Rosendals trädgārd, it was a beautiful café in the midst of a huge garden abundant of flowers and vegetables and fruits. I had a salad with goat cheese and cuscus followed by carrot cake! With our full belly’s we headed to the Vasa Mussette, which houses a Swedish war ship from the 1600’s that only sailed for about 25 minutes before it sank. It started its voyage on August 10^th, the anniversary is right around the corner. However, before it started the voyage, despite its failure, a lot of time was spent building the ship. The ships architect did not use any sort of blueprints or measurements while designing the ship, which could be to blame. The Vasa laid in the Baltic Sea for over 333 years before they were able to salvage it, and it’s 98% in tact with its original material. After walking all day throughout the island, we decided to take a taxi back unannounced to us how expensive they are!! We apparently picked the wrong company, as other taxis are less expensive.

As if our day was not full enough we still had our Crayfish party to go to, at Maria’s house. Maria is the one that came into our class earlier in the week and talked to us about the Swedish educational system. She has an amazing apartment here in Stockholm and we were scheduled to have dinner on the rooftop of her building. Unfortunately it was raining, so we had to eat in the inner part of the rooftop, which was still gorgeous. We had a pretty fantastic spread complete with crayfish, burgers and hot dogs, cheeses, fruit, chips, cake, fresh bread, traditional Swedish cake found in the northern part of Sweden, you name it and it was there.

Today (Tuesday) we said good-by to Janna, DJ and Naomi as they were all flying back home early this morning. So Julia and I went to Drottningholm Palace! It was a beautiful hour boat ride over there, which landed us with a front row spot into the palace. The palace was filled with beautiful colors and royal detailing; my eye didn’t know where to look there was so much to take in. One of my favorite parts was a room that posed as a bedroom for the Queen, however it’s not where she slept, it was used for visitors to come and dote over her while she lay in bed. Must be nice!

The Palace Park was beautiful, it so long and appears to go on forever and sort of melts into the skyline when you look through it. The upkeep it must take to man all of the shrubby and flowers must take forever! Julia and I also got to go into the theater for a tour, we volunteered to go back stage with our guide and demonstrate with the props for the group to hear. The original wind and thunder machines were still in tact, so Julia took the wind by spinning the wooden wheel that rubbed against this soft paper that created a sound identical to fast wind, and I pulled on these two long strings attached to a wooden box with rocks in it to create the thunder sound. It was really surreal to think that we were using these props that are hundreds of years old that were used to put on fabulous plays for Royalty.

After we got back from Drottningholm I went into City Hall for a brief tour. City Hall is made with over 8 million bricks and 1 million of those are hand made bricks! City Hall hosts many large events throughout the year, the biggest being the dinner and dancing celebration for the Nobel Prize awards. The dinner is hosted in the large sized banquet type room that was designed to look like an Italian piazza; they call this the blue room. My favorite room was a room that was tiled in a mosaic pattern top to bottom with real golden leaf tiles. The pictures depicted historical moments and scenery and some real life moments representative of Sweden. It was so over the top!

Tomorrow is my last day in Stockholm, and I have a full agenda to get through.

Saying good-bye to the city tomorrow will be hard, I’ve grown to love it here, but I will be happy to get home and see my family and little Marcie-Belle.

god natt

-K