A Profile of Stockholm

Stockholm. Absolutely beautiful city. Without a doubt, hands down, one of the most incredibly gorgeous cities I have yet been in.

The Swedish people are great. Very, very friendly and don't look down on you at all when you can't speak Swedish. Which doesn't sound like much, but compared to the French, the Swedish are saints.

The sights are really, really cool. So much ancient history scattered all throughout the city, which is spread across a whole set of islands. The ancient architecture is everywhere and makes everything photo worthy.

However, so far Stockholm has had one major flaw: the weather. First of all, it hasn't stopped raining since I got here, which is never a good thing. But it's even worse when the weather is hovering right around 50 degrees. Which isn't really all that cold, but when I'm used to the 115 degree weather of dry Madrid, I feel like I'm constantly freezing and wet. Yuck.

And to make it worse, stupid me, I didn't bring a single jacket or long-sleeved shirt. So today I had to break down and go buy some cover from the weather. And me, being the tight, money-saving budgeter I am, decided to only buy a jacket or an umbrella. So I went with the umbrella. Because I figured, "Hey, I can take the cold as long as I'm dry." Yet what I didn't factor in was that the wind in Stockholm whips the umbrellas around like pieces of tissue paper. And this is a common sight all throughout the city:

Umbrellas that have been trashed by the wind and discarded by their owners. So the umbrella helped a bit, but it really didn't provide all that much cover from the rain. Jordan was still freezing. So I broke down and went to an H&M, which are everywhere here, and got a jacket. The cool thing, though, is that since H&M is based out of Sweden, most of them still say Hennes & Mauritz, which is Swedish for His & Hers.

Anyway, after I finally got some cover from both my new jacket AND umbrella, I figured I could brave the weather to go do some sight-seeing. I didn't get to take too many pictures because of the rain, but here is one of them:

You can kind of tell the really cool architecture of the buildings from this, and you can definitely see that basically everything in the city is on the waterfront. Stockholm really is a city of islands and everything is fairly easily accessible.

You can also see that the weather is gray and gross. haha

So after a couple of hours of continuing to get soaked, I decided to make a beeline back for my hostel. Which, although I have nothing to do here but play on the Internet and read, it offers warmth and dryness, which is great. I can at least take a break every once in awhile to get some warmth back in me.

Yet if there is one thing I've learned while in Scandinavia, it's that the young Scandinavians LOVE their coffee houses. They are really everywhere, and if you really keep an eye out, you can see where the locals go and really find some cool places. So that is exactly what I did on my way home. Because what better way to warm yourself up than to start from the inside?

So I found this great place that had huge, delicious coffees (which coffee is something I really gained appreciation for while in Spain) and some great baked goods. So I got a mocha and big slice of Swedish apple pie. Mmmmmmmmmm........

Afterwards I finished my trek back to the hostel and now all my clothes are hanging to get the wetness out.

However, I am super-pumped, because it turns out that Anne is in Stockholm right now with her sister, so I get to see her TONIGHT! Woo! I'm meeting them for dinner and then the three of us are going to go sight-seeing tomorrow (weather permitting. which means it's doubtful. haha). So now I don't have to wait until Norway to see my favorite European girl!