Stockholm sleeps at 5 in the morning 7/25-26

We started off the day around noon which was perfect because Shawn would get home from his trip up North around 1pm. We had a nice little breakfast thanks to Kristina just before she ran out with Alex to get some good walking in. When Shawn got back we talked for a little bit and expressed our desire to go running because we were getting no exercise on our trip so far. He told us he would take us for a nice little run through the city a route that he is used to going on. It was a beautiful place to go running especially considering we were in the heart of the city. He took us up the cliffs along the cliff lines overlooking ocean, then next through more buildings down to the shoreline. We ran over a bridge and to another island in the archipelago that is Stockholm. This had mountain type trails to offer, it felt like we were not even in the city anymore. From there it came to a lake that connects to the ocean. We stopped to get a breath and Shawn told us that there is fresh water and salt water surrounding and running through Stockholm. We couldn’t tell the difference from place to place but after looking we realized the fresh water was calmer. Shawn then asked us if we wanted to go for a swim. It was warm, and we were sweating so we said sure. We stripped down to everything but our boxers (don’t forget this is the middle of the city) and dove head first off the dock into the water. It was a perfect 68 degrees which felt very nice and cool. We swam to the other side of the lake and after a little rest we swam back, got dressed and started running again feeling reinvigorated. We went over to another island, through a park, and then back to Shawn’s. It was about a 5 mile run so we were pretty exhausted. We took showers, got some food and chilled out for a little while talking about possible plans for the night.

Shawn and Kristina wanted to hang out for a little bit but couldn’t go far because Alex is only 14 months old and such a cute kid. So we made some drinks, got some chips and peanuts and went on the roof which had a pretty decent view of the city. While were hanging out up there another group of people that lived in the complex came up. Apparently having the same idea as us, and seeming like a bunch of nice people we all started chatting. After about an hour and a half they asked us what we were doing the rest of the night and if we would like to join them. They ended up being some of the coolest people we could have met. They told us they were going to the hottest club in town and we needed to come with them. It didn’t take much prodding. We quickly got ready and met them just outside the building to head over to the club which was called F 12. We quickly saw why it was the hottest club around, the line was very long and was moving very slow. This is because they are extremely picky about who they let in. The ratio of girl to guy had to be 70% women and 30% men. So being guys hearing this we thought we were in trouble. Not only that, but even though they still let in way more girls, they only let the attractive ones in, and same with guys. We had a secret weapon though that we didn’t even know we had, we weren’t from there. They like people from outside of the country way more than the locals. After a little waiting, and seeing many people ushered out of the line right next to us and not allowed in, eventually we got in. Can we just say that every woman there was extremely attractive and just leave it at that.

We felt like rock stars. Everyone wanted to meet us guys and girls. Girls would come up to us and say “You’re the two American Boys ya”? And introduce themselves to start dancing. (We found out later that our friends that had brought us were just running around telling all the girls they were there with two American guys, and that they should come meet us, needless to say we were ok with that). Even the guys were awesomely nice to us. Eventually we left the club with a particularly nice looking Swedish girl who wanted to show us another club. That club closed at 3, but apparently that’s when you’re supposed to go find another place to have fun. We said ok, but were going a little crazy because it was just shy of 3 in the morning and the sky was showing signs that the sun was about to say hello. We started off with her, she introduced us to friends of hers that said they could get us into the next place for free. We asked them how long we were supposed to stay out and they said “5, when everything closes of course”. We told them thanks for everything but that we need to go and get some sleep. We left to go get a burger at what was now 3:45 in the morning and didn’t get to bed until about 4:30.

We slept in very long the next day and when we finally got up we didn’t feel like doing anything. So we walked around the city a little, and got some dinner. After that we grabbed some ice cream for the movies we decided to watch and headed home. We watched In Bruges, and The Hangover which were highly entertaining and funny. We fell asleep to get ready for another fun day.

Sexy Town 7/24

So Friday we got up and got ready for yet another flight. We are sick of airports! Hopefully this is the last flight until we come home. From here on out we will be traveling by train and ferry. We had a cab scheduled to pick us up at 7:30am. We were able to eat some frosted flakes and honey nut cheerios before the cab got there. The cab driver that picked us up was super cool. He asked us several questions about our travels on the way to the airport. He told us that he had always wanted to travel and when he dropped us off he only made us pay half of the cab fare. Nice guy! We got on our plane and headed to Stockholm. We had to switch planes in Copenhagen and it looks way nice there but we will be back there in a few weeks. We got to Stockholm early afternoon. Our plan was to go to Justin's cousins (Shawn, Kristina, little Alex) house to enjoy a free room! We had only communicated with him through email until this point so we tried to call so we would know how to get to his place but that didn't really work since we are retarded when it comes to dialing phone numbers in Europe. There are like 74 numbers you have to dial and you have to add a plus sign or two zeros and subtract 3 numbers in different locations for it to work. What a joke! We were finally able to find out how to get to Shawn's place. We got on a train and it took us through the city all the way to his street. We got there and Kristina and Alex were there to let us in. Kristina gave us a bed to sleep in and set us up with sheets. She made us feel right at home. After we were situated we decided to go out and explore the city. Since their place is right in the middle of the city it doesn’t take too long to get anywhere we wanted to go. We walked down through the city and looked for a place to get a good dinner. We decided that we needed a good old fashion burger but when we started looking for a place that had one we realized we couldn’t read anything the menu said! (Sweden will be a great place for us to transition from English speaking countries to countries that speak no English. Everyone here speaks Swedish but most people can switch over to English like its no big deal. The people here are some of the nicest people we have been around in our lives.) When we asked people to help us read the menus they were happy to help us figure it all out. One place we went to we asked the waitress if she could help us to know what they had to eat. She gladly told us about everything on the menu. 15 minutes later when she was done we realized nothing they had was what we wanted so we told her nothing sounded good and asked where we could just get a burger. She didn’t seem the least bit mad that we had wasted her time asking her so many questions and she told us a good place to go. So we found a cool little place in a small ally way. We both ordered a chili burger. We were talking and we both had a picture in our heads of a big messy burger with chili and cheese everywhere. When it came out it was a small little burger with a spicy chili sauce on the side. They had put the lettuce, tomato, and onion on the side so we could choose what we wanted on the burger. We put all our toppings on and started looking for the top half of our hamburger bun....but it was no where to be found and we were both shocked that they had forgotten the rest of our buns. Then we realized that we were dumb and that they were meant to be eaten with a fork and knife :) It ended up being a really good meal and by the time we finished eating we were both worn out from the travels. We walked past 5 or 6 places that looked like they would be fun and had a lot of people to meet. We thought long and hard to figure out if we were going to stay out and meet some people or if we were just going to go back and go to bed. It was Friday night and we decided to be lazy and go back and watch a movie or go to sleep. We did stop at a small shop and got some waffle cones with really good ice cream. Most of the time we would let nothing keep us from exploring the night scene of a new place but this night eating ice cream and going to bed just sounded nice. After all we still had Saturday night!

In the eyes of Kings 7/23

We woke up feeling pretty refreshed this morning after sleeping in a little while. We had one thing on the agenda and that was to see the Edinburgh Castle. It certainly is the center of the city, sitting on a cliff that pretty much overlooks the entire city and the ocean. It is absolutely stunning for many reasons, but our favorite was because it reminded us of a Dragon defending castle. It has a green valley around the castle that starts to build on steep rocks that are also covered in green. This goes up from there to sheer tall walls and battlements. The only word that comes to mind is straight up Medieval!

We walked what they call “The Royal Mile” to get to the entrance of the castle. This is exactly what it sounds like. It’s about a mile long and has all sorts of shops, and pubs, and street performers, with banners hanging from building to building above us. It is a very epic way to enter the castle. When we got in the first thing we noticed was the view. We thought the view of the castle was as good as it could get, but once inside looking down on the world below our jaws dropped. Seeing the green surrounding the castle from on high to far below that eventually connected to the rest of the city that led to the water. Imagining that ships were coming out of the fog (that actually wasn’t there, it was a surprisingly nice day) to wage war on the fortress where we stood we continued on. There was so much to see, but what we thought was really interesting was to see how much they actually relied on it for a city itself. There was royal banquet halls filled with weapons, the war memorial was stunning, the cathedral where they still do weddings, and the vault where they held the jewels of Scotland. After what seemed like an entire day in the castle we decided to retire early and headed back to the hostel for a nice night of relaxation and conversation with the other travelers we had met while staying in Scotland. We went to bed early with a good anticipation of heading to Sweden the next morning. See you in Stockholm…….

Sandys Pub Edinburgh, Scotland 7/21

Scotland 7/21-7/22

We woke up and got ready to head to the airport. We were able to talk Randy into coming to Scotland with us. It was nice having our friend and brother along for the journey. By the time we left Rams place we realized we were running behind on time so we ran to the underground and caught our train to Kings Cross station (where they filmed many parts of Harry Potter). We then jumped on another train that took us out to the airport that was an hour away. We got to the airport got checked in and made the flight with some time to spare. We sat on the back row of the plain and it was the most uncomfortable flight ever! There was no room to move at all and since it was the back row the seats didn't recline. Good thing the flight was only an hour! We had booked the hostel the night before so when we got to Edinburgh we got a cab there. It was about 15 minutes away from the city center. Kind of far but it was nice to be away from city and get a more relaxed feel next to the ocean. The hostel was beautiful and comfortable. It looked like a castle. It had a good feel and there was a lot of room to relax. There was a game room that had pool tables, couches, TVs, a bar, and huge windows to look out and see the ocean. The hostel also had a theater room with lounge chairs and a continental breakfast. We checked in and got situated in our room. Then we went for a walk down to the water. We were all stunned by the beauty of this place. It was just how we would have pictured the ocean side in Scotland. It had been raining so everything was still wet and super green. After the walk we got ready and headed into the city to find some traditional dinner and live folk music. When we got there we walked around for a little while and enjoyed the medieval feel of the city. We found ourselves at a small corner Scottish pub and couldn't resist stopping in for dinner. After we ate we asked around and found a place that had live music. It was pouring and we were happy to get out of the rain. We met a couple guys from Romania and a dude from Norway and chatted it up for a few hours. We met this guy Gavin, a local and he was a total stud. he offered to take us on a little tour of the inner city and to show us a couple cool places. He took us down the street and gave us a small history lesson about the different buildings and streets. We ended up at another live music venue and sat around and talked for a few more hours. Randy had to leave us in the morning so we were trying to get the most out of what time we had left with him. We caught a taxi back to the hostel and then we stayed up until about four talking about how awesome our night was. The next morning we got up and headed back to the city. It was raining again so we bought some rain ponchos and headed over to check out the Royal mile before Randy left. The Royal mile leads up to the castle and is the main street that Edinburgh was built around. A week before we got there a 35 year old fireman had died putting out a fire in a pub. The funeral just happened to be going on as we walked towards the castle. The streets were lined on both sides with military all dressed in black. There were hundreds of people behind them on the sidewalks coming to pay their respects. We stopped to watch as a lone piper played as he marched down the road in the rain followed by a fire truck and and the rest of the funeral precession. It was a sad thing but cool thing to be able to witness. We looked around for a bit longer then we walked to the bus stop so Randy could get back to the airport. It was hard to say goodbye to Randy he is such a huge pimp that we love being around! After that got some food and went back to the hostel. The rest of the day was all about relaxing and doing computer work. We took a walk back down to the ocean and the we were shocked to see that the water level had gone down 20 feet since we were there the day before. We talked to a local lady that was walking her dog and she told us that the tides brought the water up and down twice a day. It was crazy to see how far the water had dropped. We watched the sun go down and headed back. We made some friends from Australia and we all went and watched Braveheart in the hostels movie theater. We ate some delicious chocolate covered ice cream bars and went to bed at about 2 am.

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4,500 years of unsolved mysteries 7/20

This was probably one of our favorite days because we were able to see all sorts of amazing things while at the same time seeing God help us along the way. We woke up a little later then we had originally planned in order to see everything that we wanted to see. The plan was to see the Tower of London, Buckingham Palace, Stone Henge, and then come back and ride the London Eye. Ram was not going to join us today because it was Monday and that is his day for meetings at work so he couldn’t join us. Just to point out we had to be at our bus stop at 1pm for Stone Henge.
We ran to the tube to go to the Tower of London first because we knew that we were running late already and didn’t want to miss the crown jewels. We didn’t actually realize how late we were running because of the lines that we met when we got there. The castle was awesome though, and the tower was great. It was painted white back in the 1400’s by the King of England at the time. From that time on it was known as “The White Tower”, although it looks more yellow now. That must have been a site to see back then though, and it makes you realize how important the show of power was, just as much as the power itself. Then it was into see the crown jewels which at this point we did realize how late we were running, and the line to see these was much bigger then to get into the castle, but we really wanted to see them. We got in and we were pushing people out of our way to go through faster, you could tell that some people were annoyed, but we needed to get through it. The jewels were amazing though, some really amazing things in there. Like the biggest diamond in the world on one of the scepters. Your not supposed to take pictures when you go in muahaha.
After we got out we were running to the tube. It was probably about just shy of a mile away and we ran the entire way. It was about 1:05 and we knew that they were boarding our bus for Stone Henge already and would be leaving at 1:30 and we weren’t completely sure of where it was. This is what we mean about God taking care of us. We were praying on the way there that we would make it so we could see Stone Henge, but we wouldn’t get off the tube until about 1:28. We were running around looking for our bus and we couldn’t find it. We were starting to get discouraged that we wouldn’t find it because now it was about 1:45 we thought for sure we had missed it. Just when all hope was gone we were running and I spotted a bus that looked like it might be the bus we were supposed to get on. It turns out to be the bus and they are still there having problems with “overbooking”. Turns out that a couple of people had their reservations wrong and had gotten on a day early and was causing the bus to stay and figure it out. Once we got there they saw our name on the list and went through everyone one by one until they found the culprits. We got on and they were kicked off. Later we were talking to the bus driver and he said that had never happened before, they always leave right on time regardless if they have all the people or not. Due to a series of events that led the bus driver to get their later and the manager of the tour to go through roll call they got things mixed up and we were allowed graciously by God to get on the bus. Let me just say that it was worth it.
Stone Henge was awesome! We learned that it has been there for roughly 4,500 years and they have no idea how it got there. They believe that these huge rocks were probably brought from the sea based on the type of rock. The craziest part about it is how much man power it would have taken to do something like that, over 100 men per rock easy. It was amazing to be at such an ancient place.
The bus ride back was also interesting because we thought we might get in a fight with some other passengers on the bus. We still aren’t sure where they were from although someone said that they believe they were from Romania, but let me just say that they were a pain. On the way there they were sitting behind the bus driver and complaining loudly every 2 seconds about this that and the other, not only that but they were being very rude and inconsiderate to everyone else on the bus and making snide comments so Tyler, Randy, and Justin were already on edge. When we were about to get on the bus the bus driver told us that seating does not remain the same and asked us if we would take their seats. We did and when they got on the bus they got really mad and said, “move”, “sorry, you must move”. Justin and Tyler handed them their things, and said move to the back thanks. On the way off the bus they tried to take a picture of Justin under the pretense that they wanted a picture of “the rudest person ever”, the bus driver wouldn’t let them and kicked them off. Once they were off everyone started cheering for us.
After that little episode the bus driver told us 3 that he would take us anywhere in the city that we wanted to go for free after he let everyone else off. It worked out perfect for us because we were heading to the London Eye directly after. He dropped us off right at the base and thanks us again and again and left.
The London eye was brilliant! The sun was setting, and it sits right next to Big Ben and has a great view of everything in the city when you get to the top. The top stands 450 feet tall and has a perfect 360 birds eye view of London. It was also cool because the UK flag was flying at Parliament which we are told is really unique and barely ever happens. It was flying while we were at the top, and when we touched the ground it came down. After that we walked over to get a good picture of Parliament and Big Ben from across the river while the sun was coming down and it was lighting up.
For our last dinner there Ram told us that he was going to take us to a special Indian dinner. We had resolved beforehand that we would be paying for his dinner and splitting it up because he had been paying for a lot of our meals, and nights out. When we got the check though we changed our minds, and asked to just help out with the tab. The final dollar amount ran about 500 dollars, and we sheepishly thanked Ram again for taking such good care of us while were there and turned in for an early night so we could make the plane in the morning. Next stop, Scotland……

And on the 7th day we rested 7/19

Sunday….perfect day to relax a little and rest from all the adventures. We got up at about 11:00 and we walked down the street about half a mile to a small breakfast restaurant. Its so nice to be able to walk everywhere! We are so use to driving anytime we decide to go somewhere. Everything here is close enough to just walk. So after we ate our brunch we walked down the road a bit farther to a small movie theater. We hadn’t checked movie times but we lucked out because right as we got there Harry Potter was just about to start. Justin could hardly wait. He was like an excited little school girl! We stopped at the concessions for some snacks. We asked for popcorn and the asked “sweet or salted?” Tyler responded “BUTTERY!” but there was no buttery just plain old salt. They don’t serve butter on their popcorn here. Can you believe that?! Just another reason why people in the states are a little bigger around the waist lol. The salted popcorn ended up being quite good but our drinks were warm because they don’t put ice in hardly anything. The movie was great. All four of us really enjoyed it. After the movie we walked back to Rams. Randy and Ram were tired so they took a nap while we went on a hunt for free wifi. We found a McDonalds that had it so we sat there catching up on emails and junk until both our laptops batteries died. We walked back and Ram told us he was going to take us out to an Indian dinner. We jumped on the train and headed towards the east side of London. We hardly ever eat Indian food so Ram ordered a bunch of different things. The food was really good but it was so so so hot! We were all sweating! It was a great meal. We had a very good ice cream for dessert made from buffalo milk. After dinner we went back home and talked for a while and went to bed.