Tuesday, June 25, 2013

AN IRISH VISIT TO STOCKHOLM AND HANKO

So Aoife was visiting me last week. We met up in Stockholm at the airport and found our way to the centrally located hostel we had booked for the night we would stay in the city. After that we ate dinner, took a quick nap and went out. Well, the going out part wasn't as easy as it seems since it was a Tuesday and nothing is open it felt like. Well, after lots of searching we found this terrace bar called Kvarnen in Södermalm, but unfortunately they closed not even an hour after we came. We got a tip from my friend about nice places to go and found one that was actually open called F12 Terrace. It was a very expensive bar, as everything else in Stockholm I guess, but we went there anyways. It was a pretty cool place and I liked it. We weren't out that late though since we wanted to wake up early and have time to do stuff the next morning.


So after breakfast we went shopping a bit and when we got tired of that (pretty fast actually) we took the metro (T-banan) to the Old Town (Gamla Stan). There we strolled around, took a pause at a terrace with sun, looked at the old buildings, sat down by the water, visited the exteriors of the royal palace, ate ice cream and well just had a nice stroll.


After that we went back to the hostel to pick our stuff up and headed for the harbour. We took the Viking Line M/S Amorella to Turku and Aoife was overly excited to be on the ferry. Well it is pretty special for someone who hasn't done it before and isn't a Finn or a Swede I guess. We had a three course dinner at the restaurant I work in and oh my we were full after that one. After that we went to the bar to see if there was anything happening in there, but no. Just some kids running around the dancefloor and russian women and some old ladies having the time of their life. Malin joined us after a while and we chatted for a while before deciding we should go to sleep. We really lived like hobos on the ferry since we didn't have a cabin (fully booked) so we slept in one of the staff day rooms on the sofa. That was more like a hostel when people went in and out of the room all the time, but well, we're used to sleeping at random places so it was quite okay.


We had a couple of hours stopover in Turku before we continued our trip by train to Hanko. We dropped of our bags at Marias place where we were going to stay and went for the city center to stroll around and show places to Aoife. We hooked up with Janni and Maria after a while and went food shopping for the evening. Then we took a cruise around the city and ended up at Roxx Café Pub to sit a bit. Later on we went back to Marias and started getting ready for the evening after a quick nap. We had a barbecue which was a bit different from what the Irish apparently are used to. Jeffi also joined us others and we had a nice dinner and after that we started playing Ring of Fire. A little bit too late we remembered that we were still going to go out, so we headed for the HSF terrace and after queing for a while we finally got in. Sad we didn't get to go earlier, but we had a nice time anyways. We also had a quick stop at Origo after HSF closed. The next morning we left early with Aoife so that I would be in time for a bus from Turku to Nagu and that she would catch her flight later in the afternoon. Very nice couple of days and I was very happy Aoife visited! Next time we'll see each other is probably some time next year.


Thank you for the visit Aoife!

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