Day 1 - Our Scandanavia Adventure Begins

So, we've fallen a bit behind on posting the blog seeing as how we're a week into the vacation and haven't posted anything yet.  I should have anticipated some of this but found myself consumed with other things before we finally hit the road.  The cruise ship we're on wants 99 cents a minute for internet connection so I'm simply not going to sit online and compose a blog post every night.  There's been a couple of ports we've been in that had free wifi in the terminal areas, but you're sitting on hard cheap fold-up chairs with all the other internet blog addicts ... or worse yet, facebook junkies ... and it makes you feel like a disgusting techno-junkie-weenie!  But I've used the few wifi hotspots we've had to check our email a couple of times and finally downloaded a program that lets me compose a total blog entry offline and then post it.  If it doesn't work I may resort to joining the other internet blog addicts on cold hard fold-up chairs.

The flight over was long ... and then longer ... and the management of Heathrow Airport ought to be fired for having one of the most inefficient transfer systems between terminals that could ever be imagined.  We had 2 hours between flights from Chicago to Heathrow and then Heathrow to Stockholm.  We made the second flight with 5 minutes to spare.  A 1/2 mile walk from the gate to the bus ... TO THE BUS THAT TRANSFERRED YOU TO THE NEXT TERMINAL ... is simply ridiculous.  Then one of my parents eye drop prescriptions had leaked a drop into the baggie it was held in and that constituted a major security violation when entering the next terminal.  They had to empty all their bags and have everything inspected ... papers ... hankies ... magazines ... ... ...  I've become a big believer in profiling when you're putting 83 year olds through this sort of turmoil.  It is what it is, but Heathrows on the bottom of my list of places to ever transfer again.

We made it to Stockholm and transferred to the ship.  My parents took the cruise lines transfer at $99 a piece.  Tina and I braved the Stockholm taxi system at $75 for both of us and beat them onto the ship by 30 minutes!  :)  Nonetheless, everybody arrived satisfied and happy.

The Nautica in Stockhold Sweden

Tina the Welcoming Committee

So after Tina and I were on board and in fact had our luggage unpacked in our room, the slow pokes finally showed up.

The Older Senior Citizens Arrive

So after dinner onboard, Tina and I caught a taxi back in to town to check out the nightlife of Stockholm.  It's a great old downtown area with a lot of nice night life including a jazz band we listened to for a while.  Unfortunately we were wayyyyyy to tired to last long.  But fortunately I have a sworn rule to never take a camera with me for a night out on the town.  As such, I will simply tell everyone we had a good time and we're enjoying this whole area very much, and promise to try to catch up soon. 

Until then ...

... uhhhhhhhhh .... 

... does somebody know Swedish for goodbye? :)