A friend of mine and I went to a little cruise to Stockholm to spend some quality time together, like we did last year too. We entered the first boat in the evening of our departure and the plan was simple and smart: to go for a little round in the shops and go to bed early. Yes, we managed to come off the shops in time and go to our cabin but it happened that we chatted far over midnight. Very wise! Well, that seems to happen every time we get together. And when the boat came to the Stockholm harbour and we had to wake up at six o'clock I felt like I wasn't been sleeping at all! But I decited it didn't mattered much because we were having an adventure.
Stockholm was fairly welcoming. The weather was warm in spite of the wind and even though it rained it wasn't anything an umbrella couldn't bear. I had googled a nice café where we could have some breakfast so we headed to Fru Carlsons Café, which was the nearest café to the Gärdet metro station and probably the only one having pages in the internet in that area.
During the breakfast I wondered why did so many dog owners with their animals pass the café and while passing stay a minute or two having chat with each other in front of the door. There must be very many dog owners here! When we left I noticed the café crew had placed some drinking vessels outside for dogs. That's a nice idea!
Last time we were in Stockholm we spoke only english with the locals and it worked out very well because they are so got used to foreigners and practically everybody speaks english there. This time my friend told me to speak swedish and I told her to do the same. Well, it didn't worked all the day but in Fru Carlsons Café we managed pretty well in the local language. Much to thank the fru in the café who spoke clearly enough and had very easy and welcoming attitude.
One of the main points in that day was visiting Nationalmuseum. There was an exhibition of a collection of historical royal equipment, like furniture, vessels and textiles. The most wonderful things there were wooden furniture -and a door!- decorated with intarsia. It was like mosaic made of very small pieces of wood to form elaborated pictures all over the surfaces of those objects. My friend tried to take some pics of those but the flash was banned there and without it you couldn't take good ones so what can you do?
Another exposition was about modern desing of about the last 50 years. Most of the objects there were somehow weird in a way or another so I didn't fancied them much. But can you imagine---they had Fiskars' scissors there! And also some Marimekko fabric on the wall. It actually is one of the permanent exhibitions in the museum -or so they tell in their internet pages. So, if you forget how does your scissors look like you can always go to Stockholm to check it! :D
The last stop of our trip was (like last year) a culinary shop where we spent a great deal of time tasting vinegars and olive oils with different flavours and trying to decide which ones to take with us because there was a certain limits of weight we could carry on our own. My tactics was to take something that was known to be delicious and some other that was totally new for testing in practice. I ended up buying i.a. a bottle of vinegar with passion fruit flavour and a bottle of oil with garlic flavour. And a box of cocoa powder with caramel praline flavour for the long cold and dark nights of autumn spend on the couch with a candle, woollen socks and a big mug of hot chocolate... Sadly it looked like it wasn't going very well for the shop; there wasn't many customers besides us and the assortment of spices and other stuff was decreasing. Were they on the way of closing the shop or just expecting new stuff coming soon I didn't ask. Well, there are many other shops of the same franchise out there so I will be able to get my refill of spices next time, too!
In the evening we stayed up too long -surprise! We never learn- and the first thing back home was to take a nap to survive the day. It was a really enjoyable trip and we thought we should make it a tradition with good reasons: first of all, the spices will run out in some time and we will need refill. Second: sometimes a little break of routines makes just good. Third: things we do together will ensure another twenty years of good friendship. Even though we live far apart and we don't see each other very often we still continue to keep in touch in a way or another. With all the love and respect to my new friends, an old friend is one of the most precious things a person can have.
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