Day 3:
After a day full of hurdles and unexpected changes to our plan, Leah and I decided to spend the next day to relax and hang out around Karlskrona. We woke up later on Saturday and around lunch, went down to Wayne's Coffee. This was the first place I found internet in Sweden when I first arrived so it was neat to eat lunch with Leah at the place where I had originally talked to her so much.
After lunch, we walked into the center of town to explore the farmer's market and check out one of the churches. Next, we went to check out a small museum which I had heard a lot about since living here but had yet to visit. The museum is a single room and belongs entirely to a private collector. The owner of all the pieces was apparently interviewed by the film crew for the DaVinci Code and they traveled to Karlskrona before filming to ensure that they had all the details correct - this guy must know his stuff.
When we got to the basement, we were blown away by all of the art he had in this tiny space. Everything from Rembrant to Picaso to Cezanne to van Gogh to DaVinci, and we had the whole place nearly to ourselves. The owner even walked with us for a bit and explained some of the hidden details in the DaVinci piece. Go figure - Karlskrona has some pretty cool stuff hidden in all the random little buildings!
After that museum, we walked up to the Naval Museum where Leah was quite entertained by the spiral staircases, giant ship figureheads, and the underwater section of the museum (where you could walk underneath the museum and look through windows out to the ocean water). From there, we walked around more of the island and came across numerous odd signs that required a picture being taken with them.
It was a nice day of just walking and exploring areas of the town that I hadn't seen.
That night, we went to a local pizza shop where Leah experienced her first egg-on-a-pizza, in good old Swedish style! Because we were eating later than normal, the small pizza shop was completely empty so we had the chance to talk with the cook a lot, who tried to convince Leah to come live in Sweden, haha. After stuffing our stomachs, we came back to the apartment to rest - knowing that the following day would be quite busy.
Day 4:
On Sunday, we got up quite early, packed up all of the luggage, and jumped on a train to Copenhagen. After seeing all of Karlskrona quickly and efficiently, we decided to tack on a second country to the trip and go visit Denmark for the day. We booked a hostel in the center of Copenhagen and arrived by train just before lunch.
After dropping the bags off in the hotel room, we got out on the streets and started the long process of wandering. Having not researched the city one bit before leaving, we had no idea what there was to see or where to go. Despite this set-back, we managed to cover nearly the entire city in just a few hours.
Throughout this journey, we ran into...
- an entire village of people re-enacting the medieval period
- a man dressed in a cow-suit riding on a scooter
- a massive (and quite impressive) botanical garden with a beautiful conservatory
- a statue of the Little Mermaid that looks nothing like the Little Mermaid
- lots of kids in super-puffy snowsuits
- a buffet with unlimited amounts of bri cheese (Leah was a fan, sadly the ice cream was not included)
- and best of all, a huge halloween-themed amusement park (which unfortunately cost money so we didn't go in, and we had no time)
That night we had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe and then the following morning, we loaded our stuff back up and got on the train. The first stop was the airport where Leah got off and prepared herself for the long trip back to State College (in comparison to my relatively short train ride back to Karlskrona).
So for four days, we managed to squeeze in more stuff than I had ever originally imagined. It was nice to see that our spontaneity hasn't disappeared and we picked things right up from back when I left in August. To get a better idea of our trip, check out the picasa site for pics of each day.
Needless to say, it was quite the worthwhile trip :) Now its just another month before I head back home for Christmas!
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