20th Anniversary European Bike Adventure: Day 19, Stockholm
I woke up and thought, "Oh, man. Finally, after a night of being exhausted and having a couple drinks, plus knowing that I didn't have to get up and ride this morning, I FINALLY managed to sleep in a bit!"
Then I looked at my watch, and it was 3:30am. The whole sun-never-really-goes-down thing is a real mindfuck, you guys.
Fortunately I was able to go back to sleep for a few hours.
Our primary mission for this first full day in Stockholm was to get our bike transportation home taken care of.
Well, that was our primary mission. Our FIRST mission was, as ever, breakfast.
Avo Bene from The Greasy Spoon. Avocado Benedict.
We walked to breakfast, and then afterward we started hitting the bike shops on Matt's list of bike shops, to see if we could find someone to give us two bike boxes.
Random art while wandering.
We had.. not a lot of luck. The first two bike shops we hit were pretty small, and they had no boxes to offer.
As we wandered from shop to shop, we had a discussion about our options. We were planning on finding two boxes, awkwardly walking those through the streets of downtown Stockholm back to our apartment, Matt would disassemble the bikes and box them, and then we'd somehow get two giant bike boxes and two (as yet undetermined) boxes of gear to the airport and fly home with them. That's a lot to wrap your mind around when you've just spent 3 weeks riding a bike and are very tired, both physically and emotionally. So we decided to add "ship our bikes home" to the list of things to consider. This had been on our list, but fairly near the bottom, because we knew it wouldn't be cheap if it were even an option at all. But right at that moment it seemed like the best idea in the entire world.
There were only two problems. (a) We had to find someone who could make it happen, and (b) we only had a few hours to find that person and arrange it.
You see, we only had one more day in Stockholm before we flew home, and that day was a national holiday, so everything in the city would be closed. We had to figure it out by the end of the day.
The next bike shop we found was Matt's best hope, because it was a bigger shop. And sure enough, they had bike boxes we could use. They were also willing to look into whether they could facilitate our bikes being shipped home.
Random Scenes From a Bike Shop: We knew these helmets existed, but had never seen them being used before. Not in the US, and not in any other country we'd ridden through. In fact, not until we got to Stockholm, where we actually saw dozens of them out on the road.
We basically spent the next few hours anxiously waiting and hoping. We stood in the bike shop while the guys there made calls and tried to get answers for us. The initial shipping company they reached out to was a bust, so they moved on to DHL, which sounded more promising.
Random Scenes From a Bike Shop: This place looked like it was your standard mid-sized bike shop storefront, but once you got inside, it had two extra rooms you wouldn't have anticipated, and the back room had a huge stock of bikes!
Meanwhile we're just standing in the middle of the bike shop. Awkwardly. There was no place to sit. I felt like I was in the way. I kept roaming around, trying not to block any customers.
Random Scenes from Just Outside a Bike Shop: As we sat there waiting and trying to not be in the way, I saw a person walk a very large dog by outside. So of course I ran out and pet it.
Eventually it got to be lunchtime, so we told them we'd get out of their hair for a bit and go grab a bite to eat while we waited.
We had a nice stroll over to a pizza place one of the guys recommended, which was delightful, and split a pizza, which was delicious.
This was the second pizza we had encountered on our trip, and the second pizza which was not cut/sliced in any way (other than "in half"). Is cutting pizza into individual slices a US thing?
While we ate, we discussed the shipping option some more. I think at this point, we both really wanted that to be a reality. As much as we could absolutely box our own bikes and figure out how to get them to the airport.. we really didn't want to at this point. We had our hopes pinned on having them shipped. Which meant our "this is as much as we're willing to pay" value kept getting ever higher. If a quote came in above that value, we'd have a really difficult decision to make.
We wandered back over to the bike shop to find out they had gotten an initial estimate on what it would cost to ship to Texas, but wanted our specific address to get a firm price. The estimate was still within our acceptable window, so we basically all agreed this was going to happen at this point, and instead of spending more time being in their way while they waited for the final quote, we went off to do some errands and ultimately grab our bikes and ride them back before the bike ship closed.
Our errand was finding boxes to pack our gear in for our trip home. We hoped we might get a lead on some sort of moving company or somewhere else that might have a variety of box sizes for sale (we'd gotten ours in Austin at UHaul), but nobody seemed to know of anything like that. Instead someone suggested we check out Clas Ohlson. That name meant nothing to us, but their website seemed to indicate they did sell cardboard boxes, and there was one in a mall within walking distance of our apartment, so away we went!
Random giant art on the way.
Going to a mall in a foreign country is no better than going to a mall in your own country.
We found Clas Ohlson, and we found some cardboard boxes, but there were two sizes of boxes, and neither was large enough for all our gear. We thought there might be more boxes elsewhere in the store, so we did a loop, but did not find any. Getting a little desperate, I suggested we might just buy some big suitcases and pack all our stuff in there. It would have been wasteful on our journey out, because we would have just ditched the suitcases, but on our journey home, we could just keep the suitcases! Except.. we really didn't need new suitcases. Then Matt suggested maybe we should look at big plastic tubs. Which, granted, we also didn't need, but at least we could always find a use for those. Storing all our random crap at home.
And they had plastic tubs, and they had ones that we thought might work, size-wise! (Clas Ohlson basically seemed to be Bed, Bath and Beyond. Except several people went "Oooh!" when we mentioned we went to Clas Ohlson, and nobody has ever "Oooh!"ed when you tell them you went to BB&B, so maybe it's like.. fancy BB&B? No idea.)
I took a picture of this, because EVERY SINGLE PLACE WE STAYED on this trip (okay, not moosecabin or murdercabin) had one of these, and they were wonderful. We did not buy one, because it seemed silly to have made all this effort to not travel with our bikes, and then end up traveling with a giant drying rack, but I wanted to remember what these were like for when we got home.
We bought two plastic tubs and rapidly fled the mall. Okay, we got some ice cream on the way out, because we deserved it after this day. Which wasn't over or resolved yet.
Success! In plastic tubs, and in ice cream!
We dropped the tubs off at the apartment, then, having received no notifications that things WEREN'T on track, got on our bikes for our final ride of the trip.
It was a completely uneventful half mile to the bike shop.
Last picture of my bike in front of a thing for this trip.
We dropped off our bikes and walked back to our apartment again.
Bye, bikes! See you back home, eventually, hopefully!
On the one hand.. we still didn't know exactly how much it was going to cost. Or how DHL would bill us. Or when it would be sent. Or when it would arrive. Or whether we'd ever see our bikes again.
Yes.
On the other hand we were SO GLAD WE DIDN'T HAVE TO DEAL WITH OUR BIKES ANYMORE. After 3 weeks of constantly worrying about them and dealing with them, having them out of our apartment and out of our lives was just a HUGE weight off our shoulders. We hoped we'd see them again when we got home, but honestly at that moment, it wasn't our top priority.
Unfortunately it was now basically dinner time. We had "wasted" an entire day of our time in Stockholm standing in a bike shop or walking around the city to do errands related thereto. It wasn't a waste. It was a huge burden lifted off of us. But it was a lot of enjoying Stockholm that we didn't get to do, and we didn't have a ton of time in Stockholm in the first place. And it was a surprisingly stressful day, for just having stood around all day.
To celebrate having made our eventual commute back home a billion times simpler, we decided to go out for an early dinner somewhere nice. We were not starved for choices. Doing a google maps search for restaurants near our apartment showed about 15 "$$$" restaurants within a mile. Which meant actually picking one was difficult. But we found one that was Swedish, close, and purported not to be too fancy (we only had "schlubby" and "moderately less schlubby" as options for dress), and we headed there.
We hoped because it was early, we wouldn't need a reservation. And we didn't, but the person who seated us was like, "Can you be out of here in an hour?" Which seemed.. borderline rude, the way she approached it, and made me a little wary that maybe this restaurant wasn't for us. But everyone else we dealt with while we were there was a complete delight, so no worries. And we definitely were not out of there in an hour, and nobody kicked us out.
A Dark and Stormy and an Akvavit.
My only video for the day. Feels so wrong.
Dinner was great. We both got entrees we'd had previously, and these versions of it were as good or better. We had some delicious drinks.
Crab toast appetizer.
Swedish meatballs. I liked this version with the potatoes mashed much better than the boiled potato version I had previously.
Matt's steak.
We got to enjoy the conditioned air of being indoors but the bustle of the crowd just outside, and great people-watching.
We decided not to get dessert, both because we were pretty full, and because we didn't want to overstay our non-reservationed welcome TOO much.
People watching, or BEING watched?
MATT, LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU. Creepy.
After dinner we wandered around the neighborhood a bit more.
Sir, you have.. something.. on your head..
Couldn't ever get a picture that did the colors of these guys justice..
No idea.
We might have chased these people down the street to pet their dogs.
Absolutely worth it.
Then we hit a supermarket to pick up some souvenirs. (And a box of ice cream for dessert, because it turns out we weren't COMPLETELY full.)
We got one tube of shrimpcheese and one tube of baconcheese. These are the only souvenirs I bought on this entire trip. (Matt also got us a moose-shaped cheese slicer, but I didn't realize that until later.) This kind of trip just doesn't lend itself to souvenirs. Fortunately we have a ton of photos and memories. And some shrimpcheese.
And then a valiant attempt to sleep, even though it was still completely bright outside, and despite the fact that people were starting their National Day celebrations early. A downside of having downtown lodging is that you can hear all the various live concerts happening on every side of you. (And it was too warm to close the door and windows.)
Total miles for day 19: 0.57 miles from our apartment to the bike shop.
Total miles ridden for the entire trip: 743.89 miles.
Then I looked at my watch, and it was 3:30am. The whole sun-never-really-goes-down thing is a real mindfuck, you guys.
Fortunately I was able to go back to sleep for a few hours.
Our primary mission for this first full day in Stockholm was to get our bike transportation home taken care of.
Well, that was our primary mission. Our FIRST mission was, as ever, breakfast.
Avo Bene from The Greasy Spoon. Avocado Benedict.
We walked to breakfast, and then afterward we started hitting the bike shops on Matt's list of bike shops, to see if we could find someone to give us two bike boxes.
Random art while wandering.
We had.. not a lot of luck. The first two bike shops we hit were pretty small, and they had no boxes to offer.
As we wandered from shop to shop, we had a discussion about our options. We were planning on finding two boxes, awkwardly walking those through the streets of downtown Stockholm back to our apartment, Matt would disassemble the bikes and box them, and then we'd somehow get two giant bike boxes and two (as yet undetermined) boxes of gear to the airport and fly home with them. That's a lot to wrap your mind around when you've just spent 3 weeks riding a bike and are very tired, both physically and emotionally. So we decided to add "ship our bikes home" to the list of things to consider. This had been on our list, but fairly near the bottom, because we knew it wouldn't be cheap if it were even an option at all. But right at that moment it seemed like the best idea in the entire world.
There were only two problems. (a) We had to find someone who could make it happen, and (b) we only had a few hours to find that person and arrange it.
You see, we only had one more day in Stockholm before we flew home, and that day was a national holiday, so everything in the city would be closed. We had to figure it out by the end of the day.
The next bike shop we found was Matt's best hope, because it was a bigger shop. And sure enough, they had bike boxes we could use. They were also willing to look into whether they could facilitate our bikes being shipped home.
Random Scenes From a Bike Shop: We knew these helmets existed, but had never seen them being used before. Not in the US, and not in any other country we'd ridden through. In fact, not until we got to Stockholm, where we actually saw dozens of them out on the road.
We basically spent the next few hours anxiously waiting and hoping. We stood in the bike shop while the guys there made calls and tried to get answers for us. The initial shipping company they reached out to was a bust, so they moved on to DHL, which sounded more promising.
Random Scenes From a Bike Shop: This place looked like it was your standard mid-sized bike shop storefront, but once you got inside, it had two extra rooms you wouldn't have anticipated, and the back room had a huge stock of bikes!
Meanwhile we're just standing in the middle of the bike shop. Awkwardly. There was no place to sit. I felt like I was in the way. I kept roaming around, trying not to block any customers.
Random Scenes from Just Outside a Bike Shop: As we sat there waiting and trying to not be in the way, I saw a person walk a very large dog by outside. So of course I ran out and pet it.
Eventually it got to be lunchtime, so we told them we'd get out of their hair for a bit and go grab a bite to eat while we waited.
We had a nice stroll over to a pizza place one of the guys recommended, which was delightful, and split a pizza, which was delicious.
This was the second pizza we had encountered on our trip, and the second pizza which was not cut/sliced in any way (other than "in half"). Is cutting pizza into individual slices a US thing?
While we ate, we discussed the shipping option some more. I think at this point, we both really wanted that to be a reality. As much as we could absolutely box our own bikes and figure out how to get them to the airport.. we really didn't want to at this point. We had our hopes pinned on having them shipped. Which meant our "this is as much as we're willing to pay" value kept getting ever higher. If a quote came in above that value, we'd have a really difficult decision to make.
We wandered back over to the bike shop to find out they had gotten an initial estimate on what it would cost to ship to Texas, but wanted our specific address to get a firm price. The estimate was still within our acceptable window, so we basically all agreed this was going to happen at this point, and instead of spending more time being in their way while they waited for the final quote, we went off to do some errands and ultimately grab our bikes and ride them back before the bike ship closed.
Our errand was finding boxes to pack our gear in for our trip home. We hoped we might get a lead on some sort of moving company or somewhere else that might have a variety of box sizes for sale (we'd gotten ours in Austin at UHaul), but nobody seemed to know of anything like that. Instead someone suggested we check out Clas Ohlson. That name meant nothing to us, but their website seemed to indicate they did sell cardboard boxes, and there was one in a mall within walking distance of our apartment, so away we went!
Random giant art on the way.
Going to a mall in a foreign country is no better than going to a mall in your own country.
We found Clas Ohlson, and we found some cardboard boxes, but there were two sizes of boxes, and neither was large enough for all our gear. We thought there might be more boxes elsewhere in the store, so we did a loop, but did not find any. Getting a little desperate, I suggested we might just buy some big suitcases and pack all our stuff in there. It would have been wasteful on our journey out, because we would have just ditched the suitcases, but on our journey home, we could just keep the suitcases! Except.. we really didn't need new suitcases. Then Matt suggested maybe we should look at big plastic tubs. Which, granted, we also didn't need, but at least we could always find a use for those. Storing all our random crap at home.
And they had plastic tubs, and they had ones that we thought might work, size-wise! (Clas Ohlson basically seemed to be Bed, Bath and Beyond. Except several people went "Oooh!" when we mentioned we went to Clas Ohlson, and nobody has ever "Oooh!"ed when you tell them you went to BB&B, so maybe it's like.. fancy BB&B? No idea.)
I took a picture of this, because EVERY SINGLE PLACE WE STAYED on this trip (okay, not moosecabin or murdercabin) had one of these, and they were wonderful. We did not buy one, because it seemed silly to have made all this effort to not travel with our bikes, and then end up traveling with a giant drying rack, but I wanted to remember what these were like for when we got home.
We bought two plastic tubs and rapidly fled the mall. Okay, we got some ice cream on the way out, because we deserved it after this day. Which wasn't over or resolved yet.
Success! In plastic tubs, and in ice cream!
We dropped the tubs off at the apartment, then, having received no notifications that things WEREN'T on track, got on our bikes for our final ride of the trip.
It was a completely uneventful half mile to the bike shop.
Last picture of my bike in front of a thing for this trip.
We dropped off our bikes and walked back to our apartment again.
Bye, bikes! See you back home, eventually, hopefully!
On the one hand.. we still didn't know exactly how much it was going to cost. Or how DHL would bill us. Or when it would be sent. Or when it would arrive. Or whether we'd ever see our bikes again.
Yes.
On the other hand we were SO GLAD WE DIDN'T HAVE TO DEAL WITH OUR BIKES ANYMORE. After 3 weeks of constantly worrying about them and dealing with them, having them out of our apartment and out of our lives was just a HUGE weight off our shoulders. We hoped we'd see them again when we got home, but honestly at that moment, it wasn't our top priority.
Unfortunately it was now basically dinner time. We had "wasted" an entire day of our time in Stockholm standing in a bike shop or walking around the city to do errands related thereto. It wasn't a waste. It was a huge burden lifted off of us. But it was a lot of enjoying Stockholm that we didn't get to do, and we didn't have a ton of time in Stockholm in the first place. And it was a surprisingly stressful day, for just having stood around all day.
To celebrate having made our eventual commute back home a billion times simpler, we decided to go out for an early dinner somewhere nice. We were not starved for choices. Doing a google maps search for restaurants near our apartment showed about 15 "$$$" restaurants within a mile. Which meant actually picking one was difficult. But we found one that was Swedish, close, and purported not to be too fancy (we only had "schlubby" and "moderately less schlubby" as options for dress), and we headed there.
We hoped because it was early, we wouldn't need a reservation. And we didn't, but the person who seated us was like, "Can you be out of here in an hour?" Which seemed.. borderline rude, the way she approached it, and made me a little wary that maybe this restaurant wasn't for us. But everyone else we dealt with while we were there was a complete delight, so no worries. And we definitely were not out of there in an hour, and nobody kicked us out.
A Dark and Stormy and an Akvavit.
Click to viewMy only video for the day. Feels so wrong.
Dinner was great. We both got entrees we'd had previously, and these versions of it were as good or better. We had some delicious drinks.
Crab toast appetizer.
Swedish meatballs. I liked this version with the potatoes mashed much better than the boiled potato version I had previously.
Matt's steak.
We got to enjoy the conditioned air of being indoors but the bustle of the crowd just outside, and great people-watching.
We decided not to get dessert, both because we were pretty full, and because we didn't want to overstay our non-reservationed welcome TOO much.
People watching, or BEING watched?
MATT, LOOK OUT BEHIND YOU. Creepy.
After dinner we wandered around the neighborhood a bit more.
Sir, you have.. something.. on your head..
Couldn't ever get a picture that did the colors of these guys justice..
No idea.
We might have chased these people down the street to pet their dogs.
Absolutely worth it.
Then we hit a supermarket to pick up some souvenirs. (And a box of ice cream for dessert, because it turns out we weren't COMPLETELY full.)
We got one tube of shrimpcheese and one tube of baconcheese. These are the only souvenirs I bought on this entire trip. (Matt also got us a moose-shaped cheese slicer, but I didn't realize that until later.) This kind of trip just doesn't lend itself to souvenirs. Fortunately we have a ton of photos and memories. And some shrimpcheese.
And then a valiant attempt to sleep, even though it was still completely bright outside, and despite the fact that people were starting their National Day celebrations early. A downside of having downtown lodging is that you can hear all the various live concerts happening on every side of you. (And it was too warm to close the door and windows.)
Total miles for day 19: 0.57 miles from our apartment to the bike shop.
Total miles ridden for the entire trip: 743.89 miles.