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Yesterday was the last full day we'd have with our museum passes so we had to make it count and do a much as we could. Our guide on the bike tour told us we should swing by City Hall for a tour. I wasn't all that excited about it (how fun would touring Tampa's City Hall be?) but it was on the way to the aquarium so we stopped in. I'm so glad we did! The weather is absoultely perfect right now, so after walking around the castle-like building and soaking up the sunshine we went inside to meet our guide. It's shockingly large and open with distinctly different rooms. At the main entrance you're given a distinct feeling of Italy. In another room every wall is covered with golden tiles and mosaics, and in still another the walls are draped in four hundred year old French tapestries. This building is where the Nobel laureates eat and celebrate after the ceremony, and the rooms were built with that in mind. Over 1,300 people are served in less than three minutes by more than 250 waiters. I couldn't envision how that many people could fit in one room, let alone the choreography of the waiters jogging past each other carrying massive trays of food, but I'll go out on a limb and say they probably have that dialed in pretty well by now. The waiters actually have to carry the food down a long row of steps in full view of the King and guests. Can you imagine how mortifying it would be to trip or drop something? Ugh, my stomach rolls just thinking about it. The afternoon we were there the city was hosting 38 weddings, one after another. The hall would be filled with flowers and the whole thing is free. Who knew getting married at City Hall could be the "it" thing to do? It was lunchtime when we got out of City Hall so we picked up our boat tour tickets (another freebie through the Stockholm Card) and walked around looking for a restaurant. The problem was that we were in a super commercial part of town, like Times Square, so there was no way we were going to find a place we could actually afford. We wound up at a restaurant like Chipotle that was really good but very clearly designed for tourists. The entire menu was in English and I kind of resented myself for eating there. Oh well, it's all we could afford. Just outside was a massive festival with live music and street vendors. We were about to go in when we realized it was a big Jesus rally. There were thousands of people marching along the street with banners and flags. I'm not really sure what the message was, but the pierced-up crowd didn't exactly scream "follow the Bible". The boat tour lasted for about an hour and was a really pleasant way to pass some time. I'm glad I didn't pay $40 for it, but the weather was so perfect it didn't matter that the sights weren't all that interesting (aside from an old folks home so gigantic and impressive that foreign heads of state mistook it for the King's palace, talk about a sweet retirement plan). There were kayakers in the water and little kids waving from the shore. It felt like we were in one of those tourism commercials where they'd show you a thousand impossibly happy people on an impossibly perfect day and scream "Visit Stockholm!" at the end. I was loving it. After the boat ride we jumped on the tram to the aquarium. All of us were pretty excited because the guidebook made it sound bizarrely exciting. We toured the place for twenty minutes, saw one snake and a grand total of zero monkeys. Are you kidding me? Disappointed and with no other plans we pulled out the guidebook again to find something else nearby. It took Brittany about thirty seconds to see that I had taken us to "Aquaria", a super-boring museum about water, instead of the "Aquarium" which was further down the road. Oops! My first, "wow I feel like a moron" moment of the day. More would follow :) When we finally got to the right place we discovered that we could literally do everything the ad had promised. Chelsea even "patted" a hairy tarantula! The exhibits were really amazing and well put together. They had a huge selection of snakes, birds and monkies. The monkies were the coolest part because we were allowed to walk through their habitat and interact with them. Why doesn't Busch Gardens do that? It was so much fun! We got pictures with the lemurs (which I've decided are just cats with fingers) but we saw plenty of others too. I'm still trying to figure out why we had to go the "aquarium" to see tons of monkeys and about three fish. The aquarium was just one part of a vast park, full of animals and historic buildings. It was too large to see in one day but we covered a lot of ground in search of a "free-range" moose for Brittany. They were at the very end of the trail and we got a great view of them once I convinced her to step over that pesky "closed" sign around one of the fences. On our way to the moose we saw wolves, lynxes (is that a word?) and bears. One huge bear saw us up on a ledge looking down at it and climbed a tree trunk so it could look right back. I had no idea they could climb trees so fast but now I know that if one of these things chases you in the woods you might as well just give up because you WILL die. It stood at the top of the tree trunk, balancing its hulking weight on what couldn't have been wider than a basketball. Those old circus posters of bears on balls are starting to make sense! As we walked along the path a furry red squirrel walked right in front of me. It was the weirdest thing: it had long pointy ears and was an auburn red. I've never seen one like that so I pulled out my camera and snapped some pictures. Brittany nudged me on the arm. "You know how you always make fun of the 'oh so stupid' tourists at home that take pictures of the gray squirrels? That's you." Ouch, so true :) The sun was finally starting to go down (it doesn't actually set until close to 10pm) so we got on the tube back to town for dinner. I had been wanting to try some smoked herring because I always thought of that as a traditional Swedish dish, but I didn't see it at any of the el cheapo places we could afford (I know it isn't true but it feels like everyone is rich here; you wouldn't believe the number of Ferraris we've seen!) A street vendor had fried herring, and that sounded like the next best thing. Mine came in a burrito and was edible, but definitely not great. I didn't realize they leave the skin on it. As long as I didn't think about it I was fine but whenever I saw that slimy silver skin hanging out of the burrito I doubted my dinner choice. Anything once, right? After a quick stop for ice cream on the way back to the hostel we settled into bed and peacefully fell asleep to the soft, screaming whispers of USA! USA! USA! from a drunken group of footballers in the kitchen. Oh hostels, how I love thee! Thankfully they stopped before Brittany snapped and someone got hurt, so this morning we were able to get up early and go to our meeting. It's usually hard to get to them when you're in a foreign city, but we're always glad we made the effort. It took about half an hour by tube and walking to reach the Hall. There weren't any signs outside of it so the only reason we knew we were at the right place was that we saw well-dressed people walking in. It was two levels with nine different congregations and seven different languages meeting there. I thought it was impressive that we have four, guess not! The English congregation was huge and had the coolest sound system ever. Each seat has a mic built in so there are no mic carriers at all. When you get called on you just pick up your personal mic and comment. Wow I wish we had that in the US! I told one of the sisters how cool I thought it was and she said they do that throughout Scandinavia but nowhere else. She joked that the visitors usually take pictures holding the microphone. My eyes lit up and the inevitable happened: see attached photo :) We even met a couple that spend their winters in Clearwater, so we exchanged information and are going to try to meet up when they fly over. How cool is that? We had to race from the meeting to the hostel to get changed and back on the metro before 2pm because our Stockholm cards were about to expire. Without it we'd be blowing through almost five bucks a pop for every single trip. We definitely got our money's worth out of that card! Back in the Old Town our plan was to walk and explore, which was easy to do with all the activity going on. There was some sort of traditional dancing festival happening in the old square, which was fun to watch. We sat on a bench and listened to a live orchestra play beautiful music while people in traditional dress danced. It was my favorite kind of moment. I looked up at the sky, took in the sounds, and relished experiencing something completely new. Not far from the square we found a quaint and, more importantly, affordable restaurant for lunch. It took me and Chelsea about two seconds to decide what we wanted; who can come back from Sweden without first getting real-deal Swedish meatballs? Brittany got the herring, as she denies the obvious deliciousness of red meat, and suffered the consequences. The meatballs were fantastic, and after the best meal we've had so far we walked the streets some more. By pure chance we stumbled onto an old (when I say old I really mean it) church that a sister had recommended we visit because there is a giant golden Tetragrammaton over the entry door. Click! Got the picture. Chelsea went in for a minute because it was free for her, but I didn't feel like coughing up almost thirty dollars for the two of us to go in too. According to Chelsea we didn't miss much. Our last stop was the oldest church in Stockholm, built in in 1279. See what I mean about old? Inside were the bodies of many past kings, noblemen, and their families. There were even knights in coffins laid next to their suits of armor. It was all very interesting and being able to literally touch that much history (or at least representatives of it) was a unique and worthwhile experience. Eventually our feet decided enough was enough and we made the long, slow walk back to the hostel. I took my shoes off right away because they smell like death and need to air out as much as possible before we're in a confined space again. If they don't get any better by tomorrow our flight to Hungary is going to be a terrifyingly unpleasant experience for every passenger aboard Norwegian flight 4487. I'm still full from the meatballs but you-know-who is hungry again and staring at me, begging me to be done with this so we can eat. I see a kebab in my future...
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