American Invasion of Sweden 2

The second day in Stockholm was just as warm and sunny as the day before.  We lunched by the water, planning our day to include the Vasa Museum and the Absolut Ice Bar.  Together our non existent map skills led us to believe we knew exactly where the museum was....it was only after an hour of wandering we gave up the search and hopped on a boat for an easy drop off. 

I love museums but after a while, they all begin to look the same and to be honest there is only so many paintings of Jesus and John  the Baptist I can take.  The Vasa Museum is unlike any other museum I have been to, for starters it's a sunken ship!  It was discovered impressively entact over 300 years after it sank, the only sensible thing to do with a discovery like this is to plop it in the middle of a building and create a museum around it.  I loved it, it might have the skeletons of sailors or the tales of scurvey but it was one of the most interesting museums I have seen.

Of course every hostoric outings isn't complete with some cultural drinking.  The Absolut Ice Bar in the Nordic Hotel is made for dumb tourists like me, afterall who else would pay almost 20 quid to stand in freezing temperatures just to drink a fruity vodka drink.  I don't know what was better:  the Vodka or the fact that we doned fur lined parkas and gloves to enter the bar made entirely of ice?  Only 30 dummies are allowed in the bar at a time because too much body heat will literally melt the place down.  It's not the kind of bar you stay at all night and its not just because you would freeze!  After 20 minutes and a fruit buzz, we were off to continue the crawl.  Our new friend Jesper outlined the perfect bar crawl for us, complete with pregaming spots and all night clubs.  It wasn't surprising that we ran into him 20 minutes later at the first stop, it was even less surprising when he bought us the first round of many.  Gotta love those nice Swedes, especially when they invited us to join there night out!  One bar turned into a Salsa club and one round of terrible local shots turned into 4 or 5.  There is a reason that you don't drink Listerine, it tastes terrible, unfortunately the Swedes had no problem with taking shots that might have been mouthwash for all I know.  We managed to keep pace with our new buddies on the dancefloor and at the bar until 3 before I put my drunk self in a cab home.

Barely able to function the next morning, we enjoyed lunch at a cafe by the water and picked up some cheesy suveniors before making the trip back to London.  Random fact:  Apparently Sweden is known for moose and here I was all these years only thinking about Canadains....