Stockholm

We awoke the next morning on the boat and went up to the buffet room where we had breakfast. They had a large spread of fruit, typical breakfast food, and lunch meats. We ate and also made some sandwiches to have later for lunch.

A few hours later, we arrived in Stockholm. Upon landing, the deboarding process included no customs or declarations, so (in Jennifer's interest of having her passport stamped) we sought out the customs office. Interestingly, there is no passport stamping process in the country of Sweden...

The ferry landed on the south east side of town and our hostel was about 3 mi to the northwest. We enjoyed the walk to the hostel even though it was an overcast day. The city itself is built on 14 islands and that makes for interesting walks since we're traveling along water and over bridges seemingly all the time. The island we docked at was called Soldermalm and we had to cross Gamla Stan (old town) to get to downtown Stockholm and then cross over to Kungsholmen where our hostel was.

We got to the hostel around 11am but they wouldn't let us check in till 3pm so we spent some time relaxing in the area and caught up on emails and blogging. When we were ready to head back out, we stopped by city hall and admired the courtyard there.

Sweden largely transacts in the Swedish Crona (denoted as SEK), as opposed to the Euro, and the exchange rate right now is about $1 to 6.15 SEK.

Heading back towards the city center, we stopped by the train station to learn about bus/train options to our next stop Oslo.  Heading north from the train station to Vasastaden, we walked through some busy streets and along side some nice city parks.

Looping back around to Kungsholmen, we picked up a few munchies and supplies for breakfast before returning to the hostel for some rest.