Swedish

So… All of the tabs for the blog website are now in Swedish. Hmm. I guess I'll be learning some words after all!

We said goodbye to Cambridge this morning at 9 am and took off on the bus for Heathrow Airport through the rain. Everything takes much longer with a large group of people, so even though we had 2 hours to spare when we got through security, I still feel like we set off at a good time.

Over Sweden

After a beautiful 2.5 hour flight involving a lot of seat rearranging, we touched down in Stockholm Arlanda (Good bye England! It was fun!) at about 4 pm Swedish time. I am now 9 hours ahead of California time. From the airport, we took another coach to the hotel/hostel I am currently in.
The Rygerfjord is a permanently anchored boat on across the water from Gamla Stan, the Old Town. I was expecting the quarters to be fairly tight, and they are, but it is a noticeable step down from Clare College. The room Hannah and I share is not even as big as the room Hannah had to herself in our suite at Clare. We are, however, in the middle of the spectrum of rooms here. Some people have significantly larger ones and most others have significantly smaller ones, where there is hardly any space at all. I don't think anyone will be studying in their rooms.

Rygerfjord

Our room is on the bottom of the boat, so the water is about six inches below our window when it is calm. Earlier today it was splashing up against it, and made our view fairly dramatic. We can see the city hall from our porthole.

Tiny room! I'm standing as far in the corner as I can.

We went out quickly in order to get food and discovered that Stockholm is especially gorgeous. The sun was still visible in the sky until about 9 pm and the light still lingered later at 11 pm. The water here is beautiful. At one point, fireworks from some yet unnamed festival started going off in the sky and we were treated to an arrival-day light show. We wandered around some of the streets in Gamla Stan for a while, soaking in the atmosphere. There are many more people out at night here than in Cambridge. Almost all of the restaurants have beautiful sidewalk seating and there are musicians peppered throughout. We saw everything from a brass quintet to a folk/opera singer accompanied by an accordion.
When we came back to the boat, we spent some time on the top deck in a lifeboat which had been fitted with a table and some cosy seating. The view was phenomenal (like that from the Queen's walk Mom), and we could even see some stars. The big dipper is at a different angle here than it appears to be in California! I really like the atmosphere on the deck.
Tomorrow we are getting a city tour, so I'll post more pictures then. I really really have to get to bed.

9 pm ish. Aren't you envious?

Train station we walked past

Bye!