Stockholm
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Stockholm |
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The trip began innocently. On Friday morning, we went to the airport, picked up our tickets, boarded the plane, and flew to Stockholm without incident. It was here that our luck began to turn. The SAS representative who sold us the tickets and booked the hotel said that there was no shuttle from the airport to the hotel, however, the local buses ran to the park where the hotel was, and that the airport has "tons of signs" to make finding the bus easy. Well, we saw nary a sign, but that's not a big deal since there is an information counter. We get to the front of the line, and I can already see that the female working the counter is not a happy camper. I ask where to catch a bus to the park. She points outside to the buses. Duh! I can see the buses, but there is no sign saying which bus to take. I ask, but she simply says the buses leave from out there. Thanks.
Anyway, we withdraw some cash from the ATM and buy a candy bar from the store just to break the large bills the ATM gave me in case the bus takes exact change only. In the meantime, another information line has opened (two over from the woman I initially asked). I decide to wait in that line as I'm still not sure what bus to take and I hear the information person in THIS line giving detailed bus info to another lost soul. I ask her, and she responds with perfect information: You wait in the line next to her (which is BETWEEN the helpful woman and the insolent wench) to buy a bus ticket for the bus that leaves from bus stop 11. So the bitch in the first line neglected to tell me lots of things. She is now the first person I wanted to strangle this weekend, but hey, I'm on a mini-vacation, so I try to relax.
Thankfully, the woman at the bus ticket counter is very helpful, gets us our tickets, and also arranges for a taxi to take us from the bus stop at the park to the hotel (since we have no idea where the hotel is in relation to the park, the best bet is to pre-pay 100 Kroner to have a taxi take you the rest of the way). Easy enough, right? So we get on the bus and ride towards Stockholm. We get off at the park and our cab is waiting. I instruct the driver to take us to the "Radisson SAS Royal Park Hotel." He replies "Yes, Park Hotel" and we're on our way. As we are driving and driving, I'm thinking to myself, "Hmmm, I thought the hotel was only 2 km from the bus stop. This seems pretty far. This also looks like downtown and not a park. Hmmm" Finally, we pull up to a hotel, the cabbie looks at the sign and says, "Oh, Scandic Park: you wanted the Radisson, right?" Meet strangling victim number two. He then gets on his radio to figure out where the hotel is, and lo and behold, deduces that it is "on the other side of town." He attempts to leave out that it is almost EXACTLY where we started. Anyway, after a 40 minute cab ride that should have been not even five minutes, we get to the hotel.
It can't get any worse, right? We attempt to check in. The girl working the desk, though, cannot seem to find a reservation under my name. After several trips to the back (She was "new"), she finally "found it" even though everybody in the damn place could tell she just entered in a new one (fortunately they had rooms available), especially since she said "just one night, right?" when I was booked for two nights. So, after twenty minutes in the lobby, we finally have a room, and I'm trying not to let my head explode from frustration.
After dropping off the luggage and using the facilities, we go back outside the hotel to catch the bus downtown (that bus stop is right outside the hotel). We make our way downtown, get off in the center of town, and start exploring. Most of the tourist stuff closed at 4 PM, and it's now just past that, so we decide to get some dinner at the Hard Rock (I'm always in the mood for some good ol' American cuisine and Scandinavian food sucks!). While we're enjoying our meal, it begins to rain outside. The weather lets up a bit, but still looks threatening, and we've had a long day, so we decide to catch the bus back to the hotel, call it an early night, and get a good start the next day.
We catch the bus and are on our way back to the hotel, and the bus driver makes some announcement over the P.A. system. The girls towards the back of the bus laugh. We figure he's just hitting on them and ignore it. Then the bus turns onto a side street, turns around, and heads back the way we just came. We go around the same traffic circle we were just at, but take a different exit. We go that way for a few minutes, and then proceed to turn around again. I'm very confused as to what the heck is going on now. Just then, a Swedish woman comes forward and starts screaming at the bus driver. She looks at me for help, but I respond, "Don't look at me, I don't speak Swedish." She replies, "I do, but that's not helping me a shit with this guy" and points to the driver (who obviously was not a native Swedish speaker, either).
As it turns out, the bus driver is lost (have you ever heard anything so absurd as a bus driver not knowing the route he is supposed to drive?). We proceed to turn around three more times in his mad wanderings. Everyone is yelling at him as to where to go, but he doesn't listen and just keeps driving around like a moron. He finally gets back on the highway that heads toward the hotel, but gets off at the wrong exit. We get back on the highway again, and again, he tries to get off at the wrong exit. Everyone screams at him, so he stops right in the section between the exit and the highway so there are cars passing on both sides. I really thought we were going to die. Anyway, he finally sees a break, gets back on the highway, and follows the directions from some guy from Chicago who came forward and gets us back to the hotel. We don't leave the hotel again for fear of anything else going wrong.
We have breakfast at the hotel on Saturday and again make our way back downtown knowing that things can only get better. We go to the Vasa Museum, which houses a huge Swedish warship from 1628. At the time, it was the largest and most expensive ship ever to be built by Sweden, and it would be the flagship of their navy (they were at war with Poland and were constantly battling the Danes). The Vasa is very majestic: there are very ornate carvings made right into the boat itself which are intended to show the Poles how much power and wealth the Swedes have and scare them. It was also one of the first ships built that had two decks of cannons. She was quite a sight to behold. Hundreds of people turn out to watch the Vasa's maiden voyage. She majestically pulls out of port. Suddenly she begins to list to one side, but rights herself. As the horrified onlookers watch, The Vasa again tilts to the side and over she goes. This mighty warship never made it out of the harbor.
Anyway, after seeing the boat museum and walking around town a bit, we decide that, as the city is so crowded, we would take a ferry out to Drottingholm Palace, which is the official residence of the Swedish Monarchy (which is still in use by them today). The ferry ride lasts 45 minutes and nice & scenic even if it is rather chilly on deck. We made it to the palace, though, and paid our admission to get in and see it. Had this been the first palace I'd ever seen, I probably would've been impressed, but as I've seen tons of castles and palaces since coming here, it wasn't very exciting. It was nice to get out of the bustling city for a while, though.
We go to the dock to catch the ferry back. As the ferry pulls up, most of the people are leaving room so that those getting off the boat have room to do so (there are no queue lines or anything). A bunch of people rush up, and madness ensues as everyone wants to get on the boat at once. I've found that this is usually the case over here when dealing with ferries or airplanes. Upon boarding, everyone just rushes the entrance and pushes their way through. It's very annoying, but the people just don't seem to understand that they will get on the vessel if they just wait their damn turn! The lack of personal space afforded to people in crowds also bugs me over here.
Anyway, we fight our way back onto the boat. As we are making one of several stops along the way back , there seems to be some trouble with the boat. The boat keeps going backwards and then attempting to go forward, but not really moving. This goes on for about five minutes, and we finally pull up to the dock at the stop. People get off and we pull back out. I still don't know what was wrong, but the ship was obviously not moving like it had been, and the ride back was excruciatingly slow. We finally make it back downtown, very annoyed.
We decide to get some dinner. We saw a Pizza Hut earlier, and I haven't had the Hut's pizza in quite a while and could use some cheering up, so we decide to go there. Nope. There's a line out the door and no seats available. I love pizza, but I'm not about waiting an hour just to get a seat. We decide to walk around the old town and see the Parliament building, as well as the Royal Palace in the city. We got to see a changing of the guard which was pretty cool. There was one more bus leaving the city heading back to our hotel at 7 PM, and that time was approaching, so we decided to take that bus and eat at the hotel rather than eat downtown and then have to catch a cab.
We board the bus, buy our tickets, and sit down. We are a few minutes into the ride when the bus suddenly pulls over and stops. The driver comes back (a different driver than the day before, mind you) and makes an announcement. Everyone looks bewildered. He asks if we speak English. We nod. He then proceeds to explain that the bus can go no further as the street ahead is blocked due to the marathon taking place. He tells us to walk up a few blocks and find the bus stop for bus 515, which will take us "close" to the hotel. We are not pleased, especially since he didn't tell us then when we boarded the bus, but what can we do? We get off the bus (with some others from out hotel) and walk to the 515 bus stop.
According to the schedule, a 515 should be along any moment. We wait. It doesn't come. According to the schedule, another one is due in 15 minutes. We wait. It doesn't come. According to the... you see where this is going. 45 minutes after our arrival, no bus has shown up. One of the people we are with had wandered off and found another 515 bus stop. He flagged down a driver, who told him that he would be back at THAT stop in about 15 minutes after going into town and turning around. We all go to that stop. We wait. Finally the bus shows up. We go to get on, and the driver tells us that this IS the bus we want, but there is a 15 minute layover before it will depart. We wait. Some really drunken bums got on, and they at least provided some entertainment, but not much.
The bus finally gets moving and took us "close" to the hotel, which means that we had to walk about 4 km (I'm guessing) to the hotel from the drop-off point, which was actually pretty close to where idiotic driver was lost the day before (if only we'd known we could have walked from there then!). At about 10 PM, we finally got to eat dinner in the hotel restaurant and then we went to bed.
Well, we'd had just about enough of Stockholm at this point and there really wasn't much else we wanted to see. We had planned on taking a cab to town (there was only one bus into and from town, and they were both around 11:30 AM which wouldn't have done us any good anyway). So with all of the problems we'd encountered in with transportation, we decided to sleep in, have breakfast, and then make our way out to the airport to see if we could catch an earlier flight (ours was at 6:45 PM). As it turned out, we made it to the airport without incident (walked 2 km to the bus stop, the bus showed up and did not get lost, and dropped us off right where we needed to be!) and caught the 2:00 PM flight back to Copenhagen. I've never been so happy to be back in Denmark! Anyway, I hope you've enjoyed reading all of the troubles that almost gave me a coronary.
Here are the other pictures from our trip:
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