Back to day 7

I realize now that I did a little mistake with the math. After Stockholm, we went a day Goteborg, the second largest city in Sweden...I really do not know how i forgot about that.

The thing is that we arrived pretty late in Goteborg, around noon, we had to check in into a hostel and we had just the afternoon to explore the city, so we just went to some museums and wonder around on the streets and through some parks...I spent a lot of money to see some odd animals and that was about it...what can I say, it wasn't one of our greatest days.







So, coming back to the real development of the events, days 8 and 9 we spent in Oslo, I already told you about them and from there we headed to the western part of Norway to the the incredible fjords.

Love u. Take care.

Day 8

Coming back to our little trip...the eight day we spent it in Olso. Having bought the Oslo pass we intended to do some visiting, and so we did.

The first stop was the Viling Museum, which houses archaeological finds from Tune, Gokstad, Oseberg and the Borre mound cemetery. The museum displays the Viking Age Oseberg ship, Gokstad ship and Tune ship alongside sledges, beds, a (horse) cart, wood carving, tent components, buckets and other grave goods. It has many Viking ships that have been found, very intact. Its most famous ship is the completely whole Oseberg ship.



Next was the Fram Museum, which is a museum telling the story of Norwegian polar exploration. Fram is a ship that was used in expeditions of the Arctic and Antarctic regions by the Norwegian explorers Fridtjof Nansen, Otto syerdrup, Oscar Wisting and Roald Amundsen between 1893 and 1912.



After the museums we tried...and believe me, we tried a lot, to reach the sky jumping slop. And beside the fact that they were working on the subway and we had to take I do not remember how many buses to get there...everything was under construction for an event that is going to take place in 2011.



After that disappointment we came back to the city and went to the famous park, Vigeland Sculpture Park. The park covers 80 acres (320,000 m²) and features 212 bronze and granite sculptures created by Gustave Vigeland. Vigeland personally sculpted every figure out of clay and individual craftsmen were contracted to fabricate the pieces into what they are today. These works of art reside along an 850 meter-long axis divided into six sections: The Main Gate, The Bridge, The Children’s Playground, The Fountain, The Monolith Plateau and the Wheel of Life. here are some of the sculptures:









We ended the day just walking around the city until the time came to take the next train to Stavanger.

Love u. Take care.

Brrrrrr...

Just this...

Love u. Take care.

Day 7

In the seventh day of our adventure we arrived in Oslo, where we also planned to stay two days, the first just to get around and see what the city can offer and the next buying the city card and do a little of visiting to.

Surprisingly enough, even though everything was much more expensive than in the other two Scandinavian countries there were a lot of museums with a free entrance.

We started with the old fortress, which was actually closed for visiting but we got some nice views from its walls.

At noon we watch the changing of the guard...
After that we went to a few of the museums where the entrance was free: the military museum, the national museum and the national galleries, where we had the chance to see the famous painting of Munch, Scream.


After that we went to the royal palace and had an improvised dinner in the park with all the birds.
In Oslo we saw the first electric car, charging in the parking lot:))
In the evening we took a walk on the Opera House...yes that was right ON its roof. The construction is so unique that allows visitors to walk on the roof...



By the Opera there were some tubes which made some sounds if you touched two at the same time...so you may understand why Alex was holding my nose..it is call music:))



Love u. Take care.

Day 6

The second day in Stockholm was entirely dedicated to visiting; we had to make the city card worth the money. Unfortunately enough it was Monday and as you may know a lot of the museums are closed on Mondays, but in such a huge city we could found some of them open.

According to the plan well established the day before we began with the royal palace which was right next to our hostel. The Stockholm Palace is the official residence and major royal palace of the Swedish monarch. We visited the royal apartments and the royal treasury.

Next on the list and also situated in the Old city was the Sankt Nikolai kyrka (Church of St. Nicholas), most commonly known as Storkyrkan (The Great Church) and Stockholms domkyrka (Stockholm Cathedral) and is the oldest church in Gamla Stan. It is an important example of Swedish Brick Gothic. One of the most impressive (in my oppinion) things inside the cathedral was the statue of St. George and the Dragon. The presentation of the dragon was quite unique.
Next stop was the Nobel Museum, which is a museum devoted to circulate information on the Nobel Prize, Nobel laureates from 1901 to present, and the life of the instituter Alfred Nobel (1833-1896). The museum is, together with the Swedish Academy and the Nobel Library, located in the so called Stock Exchange Building (Börshuset) taking up the north side of the square Stortorget in Gamla Stan.

After covering the old city we went to the island of Djurgarden to visit the Vasa Museum, which displays the only almost fully intact 17th century ship that has ever been salvaged, the 64-gun warship Vasa that sank on her maiden voyage in 1628. The Vasa Museum opened in 1990 and, according to the official web site, is the most visited museum in Scandinavia. Fortunately for us we got to the museum just in time to follow a presentation of the history of the ship. That’s how we found out that the colossal construction was built only for the ego of a king and only because the architects were obliged to follow his ridiculous instructions the ship sank in the first day because it was built too high and too narrow to float.
Next stop was the skyview gondola lift built on the left side of the Ericsson Globe. The lift is 100 meters, and consists of two spheric cabins, which gives the visitors an entertaining ride up to the top of the Globe, which is about 130 meters above sea level.
Another place from where we could admire the entire city was the TV tower, where only I decided to go while the boys returned to the hostel...and I got there just in time to catch the sunset, take a look:

On my way back to the hostel...

Love u. Take care.

Rules for staying in line

I do realize that I am living in this fucking country where staying in line is practically a national sport but please answer me one question: WHY THE FUCK HAVE 10 PEOPLE STAY IN LINE SO THAT JUST ONE OF THEM RESOLVES A PROBLEM.

It's Wednesday night and I just got back from the movies. As I already said several times before I love going to the movies and I also like to take my friends with me, thus I make reservations and take care of buying the tickets(although it means getting to the cinema 2 hours before the movie to sit at an incredible line). The line itself wouldn't mind, because it is natural that people would want to take advantage of the 2 for 1 offer and half of the city would come to the movies. But if you are coming with friends, like I do, and have a lot of friends, like 17 this night, you don't stay all together in line to buy the fucking tickets. If one of you is retarded and cannot manage alone find a smarter one who can, why make a kilometrical line if only one person can solve the problem. Another thing I do not understand are those people begin kissing and calling each other names while they are sitting at a line....GET A ROOM. And the cherry on top of the cake had to be a blond cashier who had the reflexes of a drunk chimpanzee.

I think I am going to take a break from buying movie tickets. I am getting to old for this shit:))

Love u. Take care

Day 5

Although we left bright and early from Copenhagen we arrived around 12 in Stockholm as there were some works made at the railway and we were transported by bus to Malmo, the first city in Sweden from where we finally took the train to Stockholm.

We had the amazing chance to see the sunrise from the well-known Öresund Bridge, the bridge that links Denmark to Sweden. The Öresund Bridge is a combined twin-track railroad and four-lane highway bridge-tunnel across the Öresund strait. The Øresund Bridge connects Sweden and Denmark, and it is the longest highway and railroad bridge in Europe. The Øresund Bridge also connects two major Metropolitan Areas: those of the Danish capital city of Copenhagen and the major Swedish city of Malmo. Furthermore, the Øresund Bridge connects the highway network of Scandinavia with those of Central and Western Europe.

Last year when I firstly came to Denmark, I arrived to Denmark by plan and when I first saw that bridge ending in a little island I could not understand where all the cars were going...the bridge is continued by an underground tunnel. The purpose for the additional expenditure and complexity related to digging a tunnel for part of the way – rather than simply raising that section of the bridge – was to avoid interfering with airlines from the nearby Copenhagen International Airport, and also to provide a clear channel for ships in good weather or bad, and to prevent ice floes from blocking the strait.

The funny part of the building process was that in spite of two schedule setbacks – the discovery of 16 unexploded World War II bombs lying on the seafloor and an inadvertently skewed tunnel segment – the bridge-tunnel was finished three months ahead of schedule. That's one hell of organization.

Coming back to Stockholm, we had the luck that the first hostel we picked was conveniently located right in the center of old town. After we put our hands on a map and made a plan for the next day, for which we bought a City Pass, we just wondered the city by foot.

In the evening we ended up in front of the Tivoli amusement park. We had planned to enter the park the next day, because we wanted to use the card all day, but finding out that the park was going to be closed on the 6^th, we had to enter. The entrance to the park was included in the price of the city card, but we had to buy little coupons to enter the rides we want. Of course the first ride had to be the worst ride in the park, and so it was…the name INSANE and the sensation raised up to its name. After one more ride for the boys and two more for me:))) we headed back to the hostel as it was already getting dark.

We (actually me and Alex) didn’t go to sleep before preparing a strong visiting plan for the second day so that city card would be a good investment.

Love u. Take care.