On the Sunday, as you might have noticed, I located an internet café in the morning. (Internet addict, me? What are you insinuating?) Afterwards, I thought I’d go see if the National Gallery was open, but was put off by the realisation that the weather was far too nice to spend time inside. Somehow I managed to meet up with the others and we set off towards Djurhagen and Gröna Lund. After some lunch and some lying-on-the-grass-in-the-sun, we entered Gröna Lund, and Ir watched our bags while AK and I went on the rollercoasters. We also went on this ride which is basically a tall tower (and I mean tall) where you sit in a row of seats around it and they raise the seats quite slowly to the top and then simply let go… The view from the top was quite spectacular, and I was busy attempting to calculate how tall the tower was when they let go, so I was not prepared at all, which was quite funny. You fall for quite a long time, so you have time to give a short scream before the air is knocked out of you and then spend the rest of the descent going “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god” and so on (well, in my case “Fy flate, fy flate, fy flate”). Only once you’re down at the bottom are you actually able to draw breath and start laughing.
Once we were all coastered out, we returned to The Bull and Bear Inn and lazed there for a while to recover from the stomach wrenching. None of us felt like pub food, however, and Ir suggested thai, a suggestion eagerly agreed to by AK and me. Question: How to find a good Thai restaurant in Stockholm when you’re pretty much a complete stranger? Answer: Ask the locals at the bar. They all had opinions and they all agreed there were two main options, one on the north side of the center and one on Söder, which was where we were staying, so we’d be able to walk back to the hostel afterwards. They all also agreed that the one to the north might have the edge foodwise, but that the one on Söder had more “atmosphere” – so we decided the one not requiring a taxi home would do us fine. And boy are we glad we did. I can’t see how the other one could possibly have had better food, and I would not have missed that thunderstorm for anything. We almost went back to the pub to thank them for the recommendation, but figured that the chances of the same people still being there was slim (on second thought, though, maybe not? It was obviously their local, after all).
We made an attempt at getting to bed early – a somewhat futile attempt, it must be said – because in order to make the flight back to Oslo we had to get up at quarter past three. Needless to say, Monday seemed like a very long day. I think we all concluded that if we’re going to Stockholm again, we’ll get the train, even with the very cheap flights, the bus from the airport makes the train only slightly more expensive, and the express from Oslo to Stockholm only takes four hours, which is less than the Oslo-airport-flight-airport-Stockholm trip takes.