We started the day with the intention of seeing the changing of the guard at the Royal Palace in Stockholm, and we were almost late. When we got there, we were confused by the lack of people in the square and waited for 15 minutes before realising we'd forgotten about Daylight Savings Time and had to wait an hour before anything started. To pass the time, we set off on a quest to find the perfect magnet.
I am not much of a picture-taker (that's Danielle's specialty) and I don't generally like collecting stuff. Souvenirs are cool in theory, but I don't like having unnecessary "junk" blocking my chi or whatever. However, without meaning to, I started collecting magnets. My first magnet was one of the tower of Pisa when I was 16 and at 19, I picked up a beautiful magnet in the shape of Australia. They've turned my fridge into a sort of fridge-passport!
I like to have a magnet for each city that I have spent some time in. However, I am very picky about my magnet choices because I want them to be unique and I want them to represent something about my trip. We didn't find my magnet on this one-hour hunt, but we did find a new filter for Danielle's camera (since it broke in Barcelona) and some other interesting souvenir items.
After the changing of the guard which was a lot of "pomp and circumstance", as Danielle put it, we set off to Sigtuna, the oldest town in Sweden. From the windows of the bus, it looked like we were on our way through Northern Ontario.
The town itself looked like a Disney recreation of a medeival village. The houses were all small. And apparently, the Chinese once came to Sigtuna, took photos and then built an exact replica of it in China. We had a delicious lunch in a cafe and then walked around taking photos. It's a town on the water, like Stockholm, but it really felt like we were on a lake somewhere north of North Bay.
Before the sun set (at 5pm), we walked up to a 13th century church. It was pretty cool. There was no entrance fee, no evidence of any effort to make it a tourist destination, hardly even an information plaque, but you could walk right into the castle and we had an interesting discussion about religion in Scandinavia and the tower had a moustache.
For the sunset, we walked back out to the water. I love natural bodies of water. I just wanted to stand on the end of the dock forever and pretend the world didn't exist. It was so peaceful there.
We went home before it got too cold, and decided to make Regular Ordinary Swedish Meal Time: Meatball Massacre for dinner. Us North Americans failed when it came to actually cooking our meatballs. We needed the touch of a real Swede to make them turn out properly, so we had one plate of "meatcrumbs" and one of real meatballs. Andreas also made a special sauce that was so delicious and you typically eat them with lingonberries.
To finish off the day, we cleaned up the dishes and decided to watch a movie. Andreas really watched to watch this Finnish film called Iron Sky. He described it as a Nazi alien invasion. I'll admit I was very skeptical, because that is about the strangest concept for a movie I've ever heard.
Photo Credit: Danielle Ambs and Rachel Haussman
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