International Delight

Bath time!

My best friend, Sam, wins the prize for making it to Stockholm the fastest of anyone!  She booked her flight from LA in a heartbeat, rush ordered her passport and embarked on her first ever international journey (if you don't include her college trips to Mexico).  Not only was I ridiculously impressed with her ambition to travel halfway around the world to see me, I was really looking forward to reconnecting with my closest friend.  She came to visit us (Calvin) right before we left for Sweden.  See that blog here.  She and Kelley helped me sell all of our household possessions to some creepers (and regular people) on Craigslist. I'm always surprised when people are normal on Craigslist.  Anyway, I digress.

Being the first visitor, she suffered from some honest first-tour-guide mistakes on my part -- like I didn't know that my favorite cafe wasn't open on Mondays.  Really? I didn't see that one coming.  Sundays? Sure. All of Stockholm is closed on Sundays but I didn't foresee Monday. Oops.  She also got to experience the apocalyptic weather that I now know is typical for spring weather here.  Wind, hail, snow, rain, followed by a brief respite of blinding sun, only to be capped off with some bitter cold.  This in particular, was extremely disappointing because we had been loving the 50F degree weather with sunny blue skies for the past month.  Apparently this is what spring is like in Sweden.  Just when you think it has arrived it goes back into hiding.  This limited some of the outdoor activities we had planned.  Nobody wants to stroll around in ping pong sized hail.

Storm rolling through

Open preschool singing

We did some touristy things like touring Stadshuset (in my opinion, the most interesting building ever), the Vasa Museum (awesome!), the Royal Palace, a cute 16th century dungeon/cafe and exploring around Stockholm.  I should've been better about taking her to more museums or a few cathedrals.  Fortunately she is completely flexible and low-maintenance (obviously that's why we get along so well!) and she was happy just taking in the sights of Gamla Stan and Kungsholmen.

On our way to Gamla Stan

Outside Stadshuset

Downtown

It was nice to have some sympathy with my baking struggles -- she got a sense of what it takes to bake a cake with instructions in a different language and metric measuring system.  We created a practice dragon cake for Calvin's 1st birthday and at one point she looked at me and said, "Now I know what you were talking about. This is hard!"  We attempted to make buttercream frosting with margarine since we couldn't find butter in the grocery store.  Needless to say, it didn't quite come out the same.  Still very tasty but a little gritty.  I'll post pictures with the birthday party post.  I don't want to give all of the surprises away!

I was shocked that Sam wasn't jet lagged during her visit.  Calvin likes to make sure everyone is up early in the morning and our apartment doesn't leave any dark places to hide to get more rest.  We leveraged this and went out for a night of drinking (5 drinks in total but it felt like "drinking") and dancing (with librarians and 23 year olds).  We ate dinner at possibly the most decorative restaurant I've ever been in.  I'm pretty sure our room was "doll house" or something and the room next to ours was a German butcher shop.  Different but fun!  Before we went out we drank some double strength shorties.  Those beers are like ninjas because by the time you're done with two swallows you're pretty much set for the night.

Drinking ninja beers (aka Festival shorties, 7.2% alcohol)

Its always interesting when someone gets to see all of the things that we've been seeing for the past two months.  Some of the things that were initially new to us now have started to become normal.  Things like the two flush buttons on the toilet, Systembolaget, and electrical outlets with only two round holes,

Overall, I think she had a really fun time and got to see us, Stockholm, and the airport in Zurich.  I hope that she plans her next visit soon!  Maybe she'll even post a blog here telling us about her trip from her perspective... :-)

We make such a great team!