Scandinavia- 4th Nov (Sat)

We had to miss the breakfast this morning since the hotel reception and breakfast only starts at 7am. We had paid our bill last night. We walked out on the streets by 6:30am. It was all quiet in the morning, no cars on the roads, only a few bicycles on the streets and a handful of people. None of the shops or cafes is open. At the central train station, it was a hustle and bustle.

We managed to get to the airport with no problems. The airport was really crowded and there was a long long queue for Scandinavian Airlines. We waited for around 45 minutes on the queue. There was an Indian who tried to cut into the queue and everyone around us protested. There was also a mother with a 9 year-old girl who tried to cut the long queue, again right in front of us. She tried to show Ross her e-ticket, but proved that her plane was no earlier than ours anyway. Ross stood to his guns and insisted that the queue goes way back. In the end, she managed to go to the express queue, approaching the airline officers and was served at the first available check-in counter. What is the queuing system for??!!

We were wondering whether the long queue was to encourage passengers to use the check-in kiosks but didn’t know whether it would work for us since we had check-in luggage. The lady behind us, after waiting behind us for 30 minutes, decided to check it out. She succeeded and left the queue. There was also a group of Chinese men behind us. One of the guys was highly philosophical about it and kept going on and on about the airport system and so on. He went on and on, I don’t think there was a pause in that 45 minutes that we waited.

With about 10 people in front of the queue, we were getting near to the check-in counters. We saw a couple of Indians having problems. Their check-in luggage was over-weight. Hers was 30kg and his is 33kg. The lady at the counter was explaining to them that the EU regulation kicks in tomorrow that hand luggage can’t be above 10kg. Their hand luggage was 10kg and 11kg. They were still at the counter after we were done. We didn’t have much problems at all. The Chinese checked in at the counter next to ours. I was surprised that they couldn’t understand English very well since I assumed that they were well-educated and well-traveled.

We boarded the plane with not much time to spare. We would usually try to grab a bite before boarding the plane. We were surprised though that we were assigned seats (not free seating) and we had food in-flight. The food was not bad.

We also had no problems getting from the airport to our hotel since we had done it before. It was snowing in Stockholm when we landed. On the airport express train, we could see the weather in the region for the next few days. Stockholm’s temperature is 3 degrees Celsius while Copenhagen is 11 degrees Celsius. We have managed to get to a colder place than we came from.

We are staying in Sheraton again and the room’s nice and spacious but we didn’t have a room with a view as we did the last time. We dropped our stuff and went out to watch the changing of guards at 12:15pm. We saw the changing of guards for a few minutes and assumed that it was over and headed for lunch. After lunch, we headed back to Kungliga Slottet (Royal Palace) to visit the Royal Apartments, places we haven’t visited yet. We had to go back to where the changing of guards took place to visit these places and realized that maybe the changing of guards wasn’t over yet. It was very curious as it was already 1:30pm, it couldn’t still be the changing of guards still going on.

The Royal Apartments was slightly disappointing. We headed out and wondered what to do next. The Kronor Museum was closed, most places were open only in summer. It was still snowing and there was dirty slush everywhere. The weather and the crowds on a Saturday are a bit depressing. We went to Tourist Information to find out more information. We also found out that the IceBar was not open today and we should therefore try to visit it today. We went to the Nordic Sea Hotel to check out reservations and were told that the IceBar is shut until Friday. We were disappointed that we wouldn’t be able to see the IceBar this time.

We decided to head back and just chill out in the hotel. Surprisingly as we walked the streets in the falling snow, it doesn’t feel as cold as Copenhagen, we suspect it’s because there is barely any wind here.

We took it easy the rest of the day and had dinner near the central station. Ross accompanied me for fast food Thai while he shamelessly had McDonalds.

The TV programmes here aren’t as good as the selection we had in Copenhagen.