Let the Swedish Flags Fly

I arrived in Stockholm at noon after 4 hours of travel from Germany.
I flew via Berlin, which wasn't too bad. I quite like flying places.
Arrived in beautiful 26 degree perfect sunny weather.

Wow... what a site to see on my first visit to Sweden. It was Sweden's National Day, which is a public holiday dedicated to Sweden. Everyone had Swedish flags and was in a really good mood. The bridges were lined with flags, so were all the buildings.
There were sooooo many people as well. The streets were just packed. I didn't even know I was arriving on such an important day, so it was a nice surprise.
I took heaps of photo's which I will publish when I get back to Germany.

After the initial wandering around aimlessly I found myself at the Royal Palace (Sweden is a Monarchy... which I didn't know until now). Because it was National Day, it was cheap to go around and check out all the sights. I couldn't take many photos because it was a "camera free" zone. I took some sneaky ones though.

After my tour around the palace I walked through the main park in Stockholm. It was packed with heaps of people and food tents. I just walked through back to the hostel.

When I arrived back I sat down and started chatting to some randoms. Ended up going out to dinner with Hillary (American Jew that was teaching English in Russia) and Linus (a Swedish-born Korean raised an Australian... what a mix). Went to an Indian place which was quite nice. Then came back about 11pm... and it was still light!

We got back and the other two went to bed... I wasn't tired so decided to head to town (all on my lonesome). I found this a club that looked ok, so went in. I wasn't drinking because I had a cold and was dehydrated from the day in the sun. The bar had 2 parts... one dance/hip-hop and the other part karaoke. It was interesting.
I sat down for a while just listening to the music in the dance room, then I spotted some people from the hostel... random. So ended up spending the night with them. We also sat down beside these really drunk Swedes who were really friendly and talkative. They kept buying us drinks (I only had one though... it would be rude to say no). Ended up going up for karaoke with with poms... sang "Living on Prayer" which completely killed my throat.

After all that we left the club around 3... and it was light... I totally missed night. Sure I have done that in NZ... but you usually need to go out until 6 or 7. Very strange only having about 2 to 3 hours of darkness here.

Got back to the hostel and crashed... was a fun first day though.