A Quickie in Stockholm

A lot has happened since my last post, but sadly all the photos are on a memory card at Mark’s parents’ house in Michigan. D’oh! We still have photos from Carlsbad Caverns (a must-see!), Austin (OMG LOVE), New Orleans (I’d move there RIGHT NOW), some from Detroit (hello every single cocktail ever), and a tiny bit from NYC (the Highline and sour beers are winners!). But rather than wait another three months, I’ll just skip ahead to the present-ish.

National Kurlyandchik’s European Vacation begins!

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We had an eight-hour layover in Stockholm on our way to Vilnius and we were not about to spend it sitting in the airport! (However, the 7-11 at the airport has a salad bar, so…Nope! Nevermind!) Eschewing the unsolicited advice from the guy at passport control to take a taxi, we bought round trip tickets on the Arlanda Express for around $35 per person. The guy claimed that the train was slow and unreliable, but we found it to be quite the opposite. From the airport to Stockholm Central took 20 minutes, and they even have a traveltime guarantee that if your train arrives more than two minutes late they’ll give you a new ticket free of charge. I’ve never heard of a taxi company doing anything remotely as thoughtful.

Anyway, enough about transportation. Stockholm! What a crazy beautiful city. We only had enough time to wander a few streets of Gamla Stan (or Old Town, Stockholm’s historic city center), grab a very Scandanavian lunch, take a glorious nap in a park next to a fountain, and sip some delicious coffees. But hey, beats watching Pitch Perfect 2 on a super uncomfortable airport chair, right? We thought so too.