SVEZIA

Before my weekend excursion to svezia, i attended a cute lil cooking class coordinated by my lovely study abroad program. it was literally just a group of 5 of us who went to an old italian woman's apartment where she taught us how to cook a lovely meal and then ate it with us. yeah it was super cute...it was me, battaline and gretchen, and then two guys from my classes, bernardo and chris. we learned how to make 2 different kinds of roman pasta, bruschetta, veal (saltimbocca alla romana), grilled eggplant, and tiramisu. here's a picture of chris and bernardo in their hot aprons cutting the pancetta for our sauce.


so it was as hands on as i expected but we learned how to make everything and also got the recipes typed out for us to make on our own. it's all really easy to make and is so so so good. i typically don't like eggplant much, but the grilled eggplant was probably one of the most amazing things ive ever tasted. here's a picture of me and battaline during dinner.


and here's one of chris and bernardo with our cooking instructor.


so i got home decently early on thursday evening, but considering how early i had to get up on friday morning i probly should have either come home earlier or gone right to bed when i got home. unfortunately, i decided to watch house of carters on you tube cause my silly sister wanted me to watch it as soon as possible so that we could discuss it and comment on how silly the show is. anyhow, so i stayed up later than i should have to pack, watch this show, and talk to my sister. i got very little sleep but it was ok cause i wasn't too awfully tired. well, i got up at like 530 to shower and get ready to go and then met collin at termini. finding and getting on the bus was no problem at all which kinda made the trip run a lot smoother. we got to ciampino not knowing what to expect and it was an absolute mad house. it is a very small airport outside of rome that was completely unorganized. you check in by destination and there's no real order to it. after checking in, everyone goes to this big hall that kinda reminded me of a modern day main hall that would find on ellis island. where there are just benches spread around and everyone waits for their turn. this is ciampino.


so while waiting in the big room we meet some other american study abroad students who are stationed in rome but spending the weekend in stockholm. theyre part of the john cabot university program for american students here in rome and they were actually quite nice. anyhow, after lining up for a while with other people on your plane, they open the doors and everyone files onto buses that drive around the runway bringing you to your planes. this is me and collin on the shuttle to get our awesome seats.


so collin and i end up being the very last people to get on the plane and so we have to take random seats, which isn't a big deal considering the flight wasn't very long. funny story, collin gets seated next to this big fat guy who takes up his seat and half of her seat and scarfs down 4 different salami sandwiches during the 2.5 hour flight. he also tends to lean over her to look out the window at clouds since there was nothing to see. i, on the other hand, was randomly placed in between the two guys we met in the airport. a fine pair, i must say. so back to the story. this was my first time flying ryan air and i have to say i really liked it. the chairs were pretty comfortable (like delta song where everychair is comfortable and leather) and the service was ok. the best part is, its free seating! it's like a free for all circus where you fend for the best seat on the plane. kinda fitting, no? well anyway, i highly recommend ryan air with its cheap flights to pretty much anywhere you would want to go. another funny thing about ryan air is that they serve beverages and things but everything is for sale, nothing is included. and as a promotion for this season, they're doing a buy one get one free shot of booze deal to try to get more people to buy it. i thought that was kinda fitting and really funny. anyhow, here are some pictures of ryan air.



the flight itself was fine. i was so tired i fell asleep before take off and woke up when there was probly like 1.5 hours of the flight left. the flight itself was fine and i occupied myself by reading the economist and listening to my trusty olive. we finally get to skavsta airport and have to hop on a bus that takes us into the city in 1 hr 20 minutes. that ride wasn't too bad either but i was a bit anxious to get there. we make it into stockholm city in pretty good time and buy T passes in order to use the train to get to our hotel. here's the sign welcoming us as well as a map of stockholm.


after figuring out how to get tickets and what ticket we need, as well as where our train goes and how to get there, we finally make it to our stop, telefonplan. what an awesome name.


after a bit of confusion and a lot of wrong turns, we finally find our hotel. we booked a hotel this time, called hotel attachè, because it wasn't much more expensive and got really good ratings. it was a bit out of the city but not very far at all and totally worth it. this was our room, 304.


so we quickly drop our stuff and pack smaller bags and head back into the city. right near the central station, where we arrived, is the old town, called Gamla Stan which actually means the city between the bridges. it's a city that dates back to 13th century and is so cute and colorful. this is me with Gamla Stan in the background from across the bridge.


so we walked through the cute lil cobblestone streets and tried to find a place to eat. we ended up deciding upon quick, cheap, swedish meatballs just to have it and also cause we were starving. here's collin with both of our meals.


so after dinner collin and walked around and i showed her the royal palace and the view of the city at night. the city is so pretty when it's all lit up.


since it was so cold and rainy, we thought warm pai (pie in america) and hot drinks would be absolutely delicious. we found a cute lil cafe that was lit by candle light and frequented by all the locals and ordered blueberry and apple pie with chai lattes. after that we were ready for bed and just headed back to the hotel. on the way home, however i caught site of an awesome subway sign in swedish. we decided to jack it since theyre so easy to steal but couldn't carry it home. here's collin with the sign.


though our hotel was a lil pricey, it was well worth it. not only was it clean and big, but the bathroom was awesome and we had cable tv in english. we slept so so well and got up to a surprise free breakfast. we expected a lil bit of bread and maybe some cereal but ended up getting this amazing gourmet traditional swedish breakfast buffet. they had 4 or 5 different kinds of bread, 4 kinds of pickled herring (which was SO amazing), 4 kinds of cheese, breakfast meats, swedish meatballs, jams, peanut butter, fresh cucumbers and tomatoes, grapes, fruit, and cookies. this is me with round 1 of 4 of our swedish breakfast. after that, i had never felt so full in my life. this time definitely even beat this year's super bowl.


after breakfast, we decided we would try to hit up the if...stockholm open. coincidentally, the stockholm open started on saturday with the first round of qualifying. granted, it was mostly people i didn't recongnize, but i still had a really good time getting to see and experience another tennis tournament for free. anyhow, here's the sign welcoming us to the stockholm open.


the stockholm open is pretty small. theres the one main central court, one side court, and one practice court. here's the main court.


another thing i loved about this and which i always love about going to different tennis tournaments is the obscurities of the ball kids. at the french open they did this weird wind up bowling motion to pass the balls around to each other. the stockholm open was actually even weirder than that. they took children's tennis rackets, unstrung, and attached a net around the rim so that it resembled a butterfly net. only the ball kids at the net had them but they used it always to catch the balls. it was so odd. regardless, here's a picture where you can see the net hanging down from the racket.


and here's one with the ball kid in action. special note for anna: as was the case at the french open, i probly attempted to take a picture of the ballkids in action at least 100 times before i even got one good one.


so after staying for a few hours, we headed back to the city to do some sightseeing. the only main site we did on saturday was city hall because the weather was so awful and i kinda didn't wanna go back to the vasamuseet. well, here's a picture of me with the city hall from across the water.


we went shopping for a while after that. what we actually ended up doing saturday night was canceling our hotel because the trains dont run past midnight and we had to be at the bus stop by 330 this morning to catch the bus to take us to our flight. before heading out to the stockholm open, we locked away our backpacks in a locker at the bus station for the day and only took with us the essentials. so after sightseeing, we did some shopping and bought some awesome stuff. i cant say what i got because it's someone's present for when i go home but lets just say that sweden has this weird obsession with everything italian, everything new york, and everything italian and new york. you can probly figure out what this has to do with. irregardless, here's a picture of central station which is actually a pretty old station that serves as the center for buses, trains, and subways.


after shopping, we stopped at a thai restaurant in this place called kungshallen. this place is known as a huge hall with all different kinds of food in it and its a general meeting place for young swedish adults to meet, eat, and head out together. collin and i were in the mood for asian so we decided on thai where we were able to have rice, noodles, and meat. delish. anyhow, after that we had plenty of time to waste so we ordered pai and chococcinos from the local cafe and sat, ate, and talked for a few hours. we initially planned on heading out the bus station after that and just waiting for our bus to arrive. little did we know what the freaking bus station closes from 1145-330. so we end up finding a mcdonalds thats open til 4 and just sit in there without eating for drinking anything until we can go back to the bus station. at 330, we find out that the area of the bus terminal with our locker is closed til 5 (around the time we needed to be at the airport thats 1.5 hours away) so we begged and pleaded with security guard to take us to our locker so that we could get our stuff to fly home. the security guard was actually really nice about it and immediately took us down to our locker so that we could catch our bus out to the airport and make it home safely. so here's the picture of our lil gate at the bus terminal. back to rome!


ok well that was my wondrous weekend in stockholm. next week...barcelona!