Just call me princess

Here's my last two days in a nutshell..

Yesterday museums/tours were on the agenda. The morning started with a tour of city hall, which is the view from my cute little port hole window! City hall is is basically like the Capital building. Half of it (the part we didn't tour) is used currently as political offices etc. We got to see all the pretty rooms though! One of the biggest rooms in City hall is called the "blue room" (even though it's no blue...the architect was being a diva) and it's actually where the Nobel prize banquet honoring the winners is held. So many people attend that it works out to where everyone gets about 60 cm of space that night, except the winners and the royal family get a whopping 80cm! After city hall, we got to climb up 5 bagillion flights of stairs (the elevator was broken) to go to the top of the tower thats attached to the building. Lunch was a trip to a local food hall type place where I had my first truffle, so yum. By this point, everyone was dragging but rest assured, another museum was in our future. Let's just say the Modern Museum (think very very very modern art) was an experience I probably can't replicate. The weather was beautiful so a few of us went and fika-ed for a little bit before doing some light shopping before dinner. The dinner of the night was Salmon. JUST KIDDING!! I actually had grilled char with risotto and it was so yummy, just like all the seafood here. I went off the deep end and got wild with panna cotta ice cream for tonights dessert (I know, someone should hold me back I'm such a wild woman).

As for today, just call me royalty! The first thing the group did was made our way to the royal palace (who knew Sweden had royalty? now you do!). Everything was ornate and over the top (not quite Versailles but working it's way there). Lots of Asian tour groups, they were so cute with their little fanny packs and white tennis shoes (when they weren't running into me). Then came fika (duh) before the formal changing of the guards. They have a little "guard changing thing" every hour but they put on a little show once a day. The annoying part was they had areas roped off for people to stand behind but people kept climbing over them which pretty much made it to where I couldn't see squat. Of course apparently there was supposed to be horses and there wasn't so I probably would have been annoyed anyway. It started drizzling a little bit and of course my umbrella was in someone else's backpack but it wasn't too bad thankfully. On my way back to our boat I actually walked right up from the Subway station to the street just as the first runner of the Stockholm marathon passed by! The marathon route went right past our boat which made some pretty sweet views. How someone can run that far in 2:16 in stinkin nuts. In other news, I have officially reached my candy/sweets limit. I've just eaten too much of it that it's making me sick to my stomach haha Also, I'm reaching my food limit in general. I don't think my body can take much more of this rich food all the time, it needs a break! No worries though, I got a chance to faceTime the rents and I asked my mom to pick up some fruits and veggies for me (because that's honestly all I want to eat for the next month, I miss them!). Speaking of food (I know I rock at the convo segways), dinner tonight was at one of our professor's friends houses. They fixed a traditional Swedish feast for us. And by traditional Swedish food I mean smoked salmon, pate, bread/butter, and a few other sort of questionable things. I ate way too many potatoes (like if I never see one again, that would be too soon). Dessert involved, you guessed it, ice cream. It was just vanilla so nothing fancy but I ate too much of course (surprised?). The dinner was fun though because the hosts are a pretty neat Swedish couple. The husband was even an Olympic athlete!!! The professor from the Karolinska Institute lives near by so he along with his two precious little daughters came to feast away with us. Small world, but he actually did his undergrad at UC Berkeley (which I'm working at this summer), so I got ask all my weather/clothing related questions. When I got back to the boat and got lucky enough to hang onto Wifi long enough to FaceTime my parents. I'm not homesick per say, but it was nice just to catch up for a few minutes. I wish I could move my home life to here, then it would be perfect because it's not really home I miss, it's more the conveniences of home. Things like an actual house, closet, family, pups, kitchen and the like. But I'll be home soon enough so for now its Viva la Sweden!