Another day in Stockholm, the drive, and day 1 skiing

Monday

Monday morning we met up with the American and Canadian girls and went to the Vasa Museum.  The Vasa was a war ship that sank before even making it out of the harbor on it's maiden voyage in 1628.  Over 300 years later it was recovered and they rebuilt the entire thing.  The pieces they didn't find they used a lighter color wood so you could see what was original and what wasn't.

They even had some of the bones on display of the people who were onboard when it sank.  Kinda creepy, but cool.

After the museum we went on a winter boat tour in the Baltic Sea.  We saw lots of castles and cool looking buildings and heard a lot about the history of the different islands we passed by.  On the boat we had some glögg, which is mulled wine served with raisins and almonds.  It was really good! 
Laura and I did some more shopping after the boat tour and we all met back up and met with Malin, her boyfriend, Erik, and her son Oscar for dinner.  We had a couple drinks that we didn't realize were about $20 each!  Everything is very expensive here.  Dinner was good, though.  After we ate we just went back to the room and went to bed so we could get an early start the next day.

Tuesday

Tuesday morning we got up and went to the Kungsgården outdoor ice rink to skate.  That was a lot of fun!  There were only a few people there and most of them left while we skated so we basically had the whole place to ourselves.  After skating around a bit it was time to go pack up our things and check out of the hotel.

We went back to the Arlanda airport to pick up our rental car and then headed to Sälen, a 6 1/2 hour drive.  Once outside of Stockholm and the area around the airport, "major" highways become 2 lane roads covered in snow.  We drove through a snow storm for awhile, which was really pretty, but also a little scary.  We didn't have any problems driving, it was just all snow covered and dark.

  We got to the hotel about a half an hour after the reception desk closed, something they failed to mention to me when booking.  So no one was there to give us the key to our room.  There were a few envelopes there that had people's names on them, but not one with my name.  We called every number we could find and didn't get any answers.  Desparate, LJ grabbed a magazine and flipped to the back.  There were about 50 phone numbers for hotels, restaurants, etc. in the area.  She randomly chose one in the middle of the page, for a different hotel.  The woman that answered just happened to actually be friends with the guy that handles all of the booking at our hotel.  So she called him and he (or someone he called and sent) came to the hotel to give us our key.  How lucky and random is that?  So thanks Daniel, I feel like you may have had something to do with that. 
Our room is awesome!  It has a little kitchen with a table, oven, microwave, dishwasher, etc.  It has a living room and 2 bedrooms with bunkbeds in each.  AND it's right on the mountain.  We can step outside of our hotel and ski straight to the lift.  AWESOME!

 








So today was our first day of skiing (LJ's first time ever and my second).  We got our lift tickets and our rental skis and then we were going to sign up for lessons.  We decided to play around with a skis a bit and it turns out Laura is a natural.  She figured it out right away, so we decided not to do the lessons and just explore.  We have already done most of the green runs at this point, it's lots of fun.  The mountains are beautiful!  We took lots of pictures.  I only fell twice and Laura didn't fall at all!!! 
After skiing we went to ICA (a grocery store) at the bottom of the mountain, which is just a short walk from our hotel.  We picked up some eggs, bread, lunch meat, cheese, salmon, and pasta.  Yum!  We made the salmon and pasta for dinner and it was delicious! 
More excitement tomorrow!