A failed experiment
What do you get when you transplant an Australian and a Kiwi from New York to Helsinki (one continent, one country and one timezone to another continent, country and timezone) after a day of sight seeing, give them 15 minutes of sleep on a very nice but very cramped plane (sitting behind an obese Russian woman with no concept of personal space), then send them off to the next country, timezone and language? A broken bottle of gin, that's what you get.
We had been in Stockholm for a whole 5 minutes, walking from the plane to the luggage carousel, sat down and smash. It took me almost a minute before I realised what had happened. Great start to Europe Adam!
From there we caught the Arlanda Express to Stockholm Central, worked out where we needed to go and arrived at a vey nice looking hotel called Rex Petit. Very nice until we got to our rooms. Rex PETIT should have been our clue - basement room with a double bed pushed up against the wall with just enough room to walk next to. The bathroom door opened and almost touched the bed. Small doesn't quite describe it, however it was reasonably priced, the breakfast was superb and the rest of the hotel was very nice. The problem is at this point we had been awake for over 26 hours and neither of us were functioning well. We had a nap for a couple of hours before we left the hotel and walked the snowy streets of Stockholm.
Wandering around we were conscious of just how tired we had become; not knowing the language, the snow obscuring the street names we ducked into one of the first restaurants we found, had a warm meal and wrote Stockholm off as a one day failed experiment. It was a shame as we really wanted to get out and explore.... but the whole lack of sleep thing kinda ruined it for us. Another time perhaps.
The next day we headed to the train station, discovered there was no record of our 'prebooked' rail tickets (gonna have words with my travel agent) and had to rebook. Thankfully it only cost $80 for the two of us for three journeys. We made ourselves comfortable and watched the Swedish countryside merge into the Danish.
We had been in Stockholm for a whole 5 minutes, walking from the plane to the luggage carousel, sat down and smash. It took me almost a minute before I realised what had happened. Great start to Europe Adam!
From there we caught the Arlanda Express to Stockholm Central, worked out where we needed to go and arrived at a vey nice looking hotel called Rex Petit. Very nice until we got to our rooms. Rex PETIT should have been our clue - basement room with a double bed pushed up against the wall with just enough room to walk next to. The bathroom door opened and almost touched the bed. Small doesn't quite describe it, however it was reasonably priced, the breakfast was superb and the rest of the hotel was very nice. The problem is at this point we had been awake for over 26 hours and neither of us were functioning well. We had a nap for a couple of hours before we left the hotel and walked the snowy streets of Stockholm.
Wandering around we were conscious of just how tired we had become; not knowing the language, the snow obscuring the street names we ducked into one of the first restaurants we found, had a warm meal and wrote Stockholm off as a one day failed experiment. It was a shame as we really wanted to get out and explore.... but the whole lack of sleep thing kinda ruined it for us. Another time perhaps.
The next day we headed to the train station, discovered there was no record of our 'prebooked' rail tickets (gonna have words with my travel agent) and had to rebook. Thankfully it only cost $80 for the two of us for three journeys. We made ourselves comfortable and watched the Swedish countryside merge into the Danish.