Friday, July 27, 2018

EuRoad Trip 2018: A Swedish Palace then off to Norway

Stockholm had treated us real nice. I don't wanna go but I gotta go, you know what I mean?


I think I've mentioned once or twice that Scandinavia was experiencing a heat wave. Well they don't get much heat up in these parts and as a result there was no air conditioning in the hotel rooms. Like none. There were adjustable thermostats on the walls but the front desk confirmed that they don't do anything. Well the rooms got pretty warm. The best they could do for us was move us to the ground floor. That was good enough, as it was much more comfortable down there.


Hotel breakfast was a madhouse today. I took the occasion of my my last breakfast in Sweden as an opportunity to look for some weird stuff.


Kalles Kaviar is a paste made of salted cod roe and some spices. It's not bad. You can buy it at IKEA if you're cool.


These looked like a cross between an onion and a potato. I couldn't figure them out so I asked the chef. They were roasted celery root halves. I've never seen such a thing. It was funny because they still had a rooty potato thing going on but I could also definitely taste the celery.


The hotel also had a different fun fruit/vegetable blend shot thing available every day.


Drottningholm Palace is the private residence of the Swedish royal family. Privacy died a long time ago, though, so we walked all over it.


















I can't get enough of the heating systems in these places.




Father of modern taxonomy Carl Linnaeus helped the Queen of Sweden set up her library exhibits.


















Took some time to hang out with Marcus Aurelius.




















Princess Victoria married her fitness instructor. That's the only thing I learned about her.


Hej (sounds like "hey") is Swedish for hello. But hej hej is an even more emphatic hello. Double the hej, double the fun.


Swedish McDonald's have sweet potato fries. No wonder they are all so happy up there.








I was so confused by a Swedish gas pump that I had to ask a nearby biker for help. It was embarrassing, but I also had a good excuse to talk to a Swedish biker.


We passed from Sweden to neighboring Norway. The trees didn't seem to care which side of the line they were on.






Oslo was founded in friggin' 1040. Or 944 BJ(Before John) depending on the calendar you believe in. All of the Nobel Prizes are awarded in Stockholm except for the Peace Prize, which is awarded in Oslo.




The CityBox Oslo had this self check-in kiosk that I'm really surprised isn't a thing in US hotels. Oslo is one of the most expensive cities in the world, so I guess this is a good place to try to cut costs.
















We had dinner at an interesting new-agey kind of joint called Brutus. I went for the set menu which was 6 small plates of cool stuff. It was nice because I could just trust them to bring me something delicious and interesting, but it's sad because now I can't remember which was which. Plus they were so hipster whenever they had run out of small batch heirloom vegan celery they just winged it and made substitutions. Whatever.
















One thing I remember most from the walk back to the hotel were the rats. It was a city as much for rats as it was for people.


The city looked nice at night. I was looking forward to crushing it in the morning, when all the rats were asleep.




Mr. Boxworthy was waiting patiently to welcome us back to CityBox Oslo.

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