Nightglow Window

With Only The Vaguest Agenda

It was a "free day" today, meaning that we didn't have to do anything or be anywhere until the evening when we would meet Barry and Liv at her parent's apartment for dinner.

After all the long days of running around, it felt good to sleep in. But by 9:00 a.m. the sun beating on the window had made the room uncomfortably warm—plus you have to feel a little guilty sleeping in when on vacation when there's so much to see and do.

So we dashed down to breakfast and then rented bicycles. The day was stellar and we knew there's only so much you can see from the subway, so we carved out a five-hour block of time and set out—with only the vaguest agenda.

I have to say that the happiest I've been in a long time was during those hours on the bike. The city is beautiful and caters completely to cyclists. It was great just to relax and cruise in the sunshine, knowing that the bike path would eventually take you someplace great.

We started by riding along the water on Södermalm (the south island) and worked our way up to the north shore, which lead around on the street Soder Malarstrand to a short bridge to Gamla Stan (the old city). We stopped to buy gifts for the girls and then slowly pushed our bikes through the narrow streets and crowds of people. The cobblestone streets made cycling bumpy but fun.

The black one-speed bikes reminded me of something, but it wasn't until Christy started singing the witch theme from Wizard Of Oz and laughing that "I'll get you my pretty, and your little dog too!" that I realized what they reminded me of.

The streets were packed, especially Drottninggatan, a mile-long pedestrian mall. We worked our way up to the end of that shopping area and then zoomed back on Sveavagen (another large avenue), vaguely looking for the WESC store. We're doing a profile on this Swedish brand for next issue and it would be great to have visited the flagship store and snap off a few photos.

No luck.

We stopped at an outdoor market and bought some fruit, ducked our head into a church, and then down once again off the hill to the water. Down the pathway on Strandvagen, we went to another island, Skanse, where the Vasa museum is located.

The Vasa was a swedish warship, 69 meters long, that capsized in 1628 in the harbor and sank into the muck. It lay there for the next 350+ years until it was raised a few decades ago. It has been carefully restored and is now housed in a dim, humid museum built especially to preserve the oaken timbers of the ship. The movie in the museum was interesting, but the darkness made us begin to fade, so we didn't stay too long.

Back out into the sunshine and we quickly rallied, heading down to the Grona Lunds Tivoli amusement park where we grabbed a quick ferry back to Old Town. We had passes for all the subways and ferries, buy had to pay 30 crowns each for the bikes—a bit steep I thought.

Anyway, we had to find out how we were going to get to the airport the next day, so we made our way to the Central Station. Busses leave from 3:35a.m. to 4:00 a.m. for the 90-minute trip back to airport. This would necessitate a 3:00 a.m. wakeup call, which sounds like absolute torture.

But we'd pull it off, and that was tomorrow. Today was still sunny and we had a ways to bike to get back to the hotel. We crossed over to Kungsholmen (another island) and worked our way down the Riddarfjarden, to a long bridge that lead back to Södermalm. After a bit of trial and error we found the bike path leading up the bridge and made it back to the hotel without much drama—almost exactly five hours after we set out.

A nap was most certainly in order and, despite the heat, easy to manage. Barry called at around 6:00 for dinner so we hustled over to Liv's dads house for a bit.

More on that in a bit.

--Later --

After hours of torpor, we rushed a quickie, I mean quickly and got to Barry’s apartment not too terribly late. Liv’s parent’s apartment was only a short walk away, and we were pretty much on time.

It was a friendly dinner, and nice to be able to spend more time with Barry before we fly out tomorrow. The dinner spread was elaborate: salmon and meatballs and chicken, salad, watermelon, homemade bread, brie and delicious wine punch with fresh strawberries, lemon, and mint.

Barry has made a very nice home for himself, and it's great to be able to picture where he lives and works.

Liv made the final speech of the wedding week (Swedes apparently make lots of speeches, or maybe it’s just Liv’s family?), thanking us for coming and thanking her siblings and parents for all their help.

It was still relatively early, but since we had to get up at three, we made our goodbyes, making a short detour to a park on the top of the bluff to watch the sunset (it was about 9:30 p.m.) We snapped a few photos on Barry and Bryan’s camera. I had left mine at the hotel (for once) and then, just like that, we were saying our goodbyes as Bryan Sierra jumped on the subway and Barry walked us back to the hotel.

It was now about 10:30 p.m. when we finished packing and Christy wrote postcards and I downloaded photos and putzed around. Finally, at around 11:00 it was lights out, knowing that we had to get up in just a few hours.