Apparently squeezing four people into the room a size of a closet pretty much guarantees that you will be waking up in the middle of night completely drenched in sweat.  But after opening the windows to the freezing air outside and returning to a comfortable sleep, it is good morning to a tasty hostel breakfast.  After more unnecessary confusion about bathhouses, we were on our way to the local subway station.  And I realized that, this is going to sound bizarre, but I love the smell of subway stations. 

There is something about being in there, with the stuffy warmth that comes from the subway cars cooped up underground, but it just feels so familiar.  The Danish public transit doesn’t smell that way.  But anyway, we got on the subway headed into Gamla Stan, the very old part of Stockholm, founded in 1200.  The subway stations have all been “decorated” by artists, and so every stop that we went by was really cool to look at.

I couldn’t believe the weather though; even though it was still cold, the sunny blue skies told a completely different story.  We definitely did all that we could to soak up the vitamin D.

I was really looking forward to what was supposed to be a 3 hour walking tour of Gamla Stan, but that turned out to mean a three hour stop and serial sketch session.  In the shade.  We were freezing and miserable that we couldn’t be walking around in the sun, but we eventually made it through, and some people even had great sketches to show for it.

I mean it was so beautiful. I don’t think it was possible to take a bad picture.

Next stop was outside of the kulturhuset (culture house - photo above right).  We were so cold, a group of us went in and ate on the top floor, and it was great food at a great price, and close to our meeting point for the bathhouse.

I don’t have any pictures from the bathhouse, but we were so chilled to the bone that nothing felt especially warm to us!  They had a pool, a couple of hot tubs (like a warm bath) and sauna and steam rooms.  The sauna and the steam rooms had a no-bathing-costume policy, which some American students chose to ignore, but I figured when in Rome (Stockholm) and enjoyed the sauna, which really was a liberating experience. 

Then after the bathhouse we had just a little bit of time to walk around and enjoy Stockholm, which we did.

Next stop was Moderna Museet (modern museum) where I was very excited to see the Lee Lozano exhibit, which I had wanted to see when it was in New York but I had missed it.  The architectural museum was also attached there, and we only had two hours to try and see everything.

We stayed in the museum until it closed, and got to walk home at dusk.  It was gorgeous.  Unfortunately the pictures are blurry because I was trying to make-shift a tripod, but you can get the idea.

We went back to the hostel, dropped our things off, and got ready for our last dinner of the trip at Stortorgskällaren.

We enjoyed delicious food and drink, and then went to the same area to enjoy some drinks together.  Somehow we happened to find probably the only bar in Stockholm that would hold all of us, and we were ready to “go all night” since it was our last day.  Well apparently we are getting a little too used to Denmark, where bars don’t close till 6am or later, cause all of the bars closed at 1, and the diskoteks were really sketchy, so we ended up going home when the bars closed. 

Matt committing identity theft.

Didn’t matter, though, cause we still had a blast.  I met the Canadian National Fencing Team, drank only a little gross beer (was missing Vermont) and I came back to our “coat table” to find this red-head going through my wallet.  Should have known they were no good.  So I took a picture haha.  Overall a really fun night, and back to the hostel we went where we got to sleep in because we didn’t have to leave until 10am!  Woah.