Day 30
Departure day in Copenhagen Denmark from the cruise today- NCL gave us a usd$95 credit at the end which we weren’t expecting! But we double, double checked and they said it was correct, so that was nice with nothing to pay 😊. We left Youngky (Yon-kee) our cabin steward, some extra money as well. He has a wife & 2 yr old he only sees every 8 months - back at home in the Phillipines and they work hard-16 cabins each to do twice a day.
Leaving the cruise- it is a day where we will taxi, train, walk, bus, walk, bus and walk again! All for the Absolut Vodka tour in Sweden!!
We’ve had a great 9 days on the Baltic cruise and have caught up after the super busy Eastern Europe coach tour.
We got our own bags off today so we could depart whenever we liked. Was fine to get a taxi luckily as lots of people were also getting off, and into the main Koebhavn-h train station, about $45. We got there a couple of hours early so we could work it all out as everything is in Danish. Got yummy soft black bread salad sandwiches and chai lattes in a big mug 😊.
Mooched around until 11:30am then made our way downstairs with our cases and worked out the platform. Glad we gave ourselves time as we also needed to find the correct letter to wait at, on the platform. Got on the train - were thinking about our Rome trip years ago, where another couple we met who were in 1st class, got in the wrong train as ours was late and were last seen heading in the wrong direction!?!
Got on the train but it was hard to find our seats as no staff anywhere, so gray stayed with the bags and I headed down the train- found them finally then we moved ourselves to the right place. We were lucky- had most of the carriage to ourselves where the other carriages were chocka- glad we paid for the 1st class seating.
We arrived in Kristianstad train station- I had booked a hotel nearby so we walked to Stadshotelet, on the square easily. A quick turnaround and we were out again back to the train station to get a bus to Ahus (“Or-Hous “) where the Absolut factory is. Thank god most people speak English so we could get our tickets- only about $6pp one way. It started to rain as it does here, from clear sky!
Sheez it was a 40min ride into the middle of nowhere in the flippin forest to the factory! But Graeme is loving it haha 😂.
Ok, so the written bus stop that the hotel gave us didn’t quite work with the bus we were on - so we ended up at the end of the line without our stop. The driver didnt speak much English but as fate would have it, an
ex-American diplomat with the foreign service got on and asked us where we were trying to go!
Bob spoke 8 languages, was 73 yrs young, loved talking about his life and chose to help the Collis’s😂. Thank god as we would have had a hard time finding where we needed to go on this deviated route. We stayed on the bus and Bob got off with us and directed us to the shining light - Absolut Home😊, so we walked in the rain to the factory about a km away.
What ensued was a delightful education in their distilling process and drinking/mixing of their cocktails. Someone - aka, graeme was super happy. This had been his plan back in Melbourne and it definitely put a new slant of when we walk into a store and look at Absolut vodka, all the way from where we are now - basically the middle of nowhere in Sweden. The Absolut factory was founded in 1879 by Lars Olson-Smith and sells
120 million bottles a year in 26 countries😳😇. Every one of those bottles comes from this factory!
We stopped afterwards and had a couple of vodka espresso’s and elderflower Collins, along with Swedish Octopus with garlic butter
potatoes- was sublime.
We are now sitting in a bus stop in Sweden, waiting for a bus and Graeme has ‘James’ and ‘Joy Division’playing for a bit of ambience!!!!! Such a weird and wonderful day!!
It was funny – a guy was riding past on a pushbike and heard the music playing in the bus stop, he kept turning around and staring and then rode back and sat on his bike beside us – then rode away again after awhile! He must’ve liked the music ha ha.
We got the bus back then a quick turnaround and out for dinner across the road to a fantastic steakhouse which was chocka but we really really noticed the difference – all the Swedes are very quiet speakers and after the very loud speakers of a few nationalities on the ship! it was lovely to have a quiet and comfortable ambience. We sat in wing chairs in a corner of our own and enjoyed amazing cocktails – yes there were more than we had already tried to date! And had a really lovely meal with burgers and kumara - aka sweet potatoes fries Yum. Was about $130 I think for 2 cocktails, 2 beers, a shared starter and 2 burgers and fries, so not bad for Sweden:-)
Rolled back over the road! and up to our room – the European beds are like we remember from last time, you have a double base but two very separate mattresses and two duvets. The pillows are terrible soft lumpy kapok ones like in Germany. I fixed mine by stuffing two in the one pillowcase and it’s ok like that. There is no cooling in the room so got a fan and that surficed as there are big dormer windows but being a Saturday night there are lots of people outside in the pedestrian street beneath us, so needed to keep the windows closed.
Day 31
Woke to a woolly, windy day – the Swedes tell us this is not the norm but the hurricane off the Bahamas is affecting everywhere.
We went down and had a leisurely breakfast in the old hotel – what a beautiful building this is and they have kept it fairly original. For $195 per night including breakfast, it is pretty good.
Spoke to Elin On the front desk about a late check out as we don’t fly out till 5:45 pm to Stockholm. We arranged to have the latest check out we could at 2:30 pm, then went out for a walk around the town. Most places are closed as it is Sunday and it’s like Warragul , where everything is sleepy in the weekend. Kristianstad is a town of 40,000 people, and was built as a garrison in the 1600s and many of the buildings have been kept in pristine condition.
We found a shopping centre where half of the shops were open and wandered around. There are a lot of pedestrian streets which always seem to give towns a lovely atmosphere. Bought some eyedrops for soothing my sore eye which were great and then we went and had a cuppa and a muffin and wandered around a bit more. Bought a top and a couple of gifts which was nice as we haven’t really seen any clothing shops to date for some reason!
Went back to our hotel and spent 3 hours catching up on the blog and attaching photos, that I couldn’t do with such limited and slow internet on the cruise ship. It is a laborious job as the blogspot website does not work well with iPads and phones so it throws me out a lot and I have to refresh constantly to try and write and load things. But I have been doing this travel blog for big trips for 12 years now so can’t let the side down now! I would completely forget all the details of our trips away, anyway otherwise!
Also washed my hair with normal water – what a difference! The desalinated water on the ship turned my hair so yellow and like frizzy straw no matter what I put in it, so it was lovely to have it all nice and soft again today. Will be going straight to the hairdresser to get the colour tone right again when I get home ha ha!
We went for another wander around town and then sat in the hotel lobby on the lovely leather armchairs until our taxi came. We had a lovely young girl called Linda who had limited English, but enough for us to chat.
She dropped us at the regional Kristianstad airport $50 fixed price – it is funny as the airport was completely empty and we were the only people here, but at least there is a runway, as Graeme said!
They are setting up for an event tomorrow with 700 people, but offered us tea and coffee and directed us to a nice lounge to wait a couple hours. Graemes Germaness came out and we Had to be here early, even though it said on the website you only had to be here here to board 10 mins before departure?! I think the staff are probably laughing at us ha ha!
We have booked and paid for an extra bag for the next two flights in economy as Graeme didn’t want to have issues with heavy bags like we had once or twice in the past. It makes it easier as we had a big duffel bag laid flat in the suitcase that is now coming in handy, although I sense the plane we will be on today will be small!?!
We fly into Bromma airport and will get an Uber or taxi to the Pop House ABBA Hotel, in Stockholm for the next 2 days.
Heaps of people arrived about an hour after we arrived at the airport – look like more than what fit on the small fokka 50 plane. We all boarded and took off – with the high winds the take off and landing were real shit your pants material! Reminded me so much of our flight a few years ago into rhodes, in the middle of an electric storm where we were flying sideways. This wasn’t quite that bad and once we got up above the clouds it was fine.
A quick one hour flight and we were in Stockholm. We found like many Scandinavian airports, they had free Wi-Fi so we booked a Uber into our hotel area as we have been told it wasn’t easy to do by public transport. It was a bit manic outside the airport with lots of taxis also trying to get customers and waving to them! But we found our guy. There are a lot of Arabs here driving taxis, saw the same with Africans in Copenhagen.
Glad we did not try and make her own way there is there was so many twists and turns and it was quite a long way to the abba museum hotel. Cost was about $40 which was really reasonable. We got there about 8 pm and checked in, but found that everything around was closed meal wise as it is a Sunday and being away from the centre of town we couldn’t find anything after walking around for half an hour or so. Graeme was starving and so I decided to download and try Uber eats as I had seen a girl in the lift who had bought food this way. It was easy to download and obviously linked to Uber rides, so I found the one place that had their menu in English! And ordered pizza. The poor guy came biking along in the freezing cold wind in the dark so Graeme gave him a tip!
The rooms here are very small but we got a themed room with floor-to-ceiling windows both outside walls. We have Abba prints and some books etc they have left in the room. The bed is lovely and soft and the usual european type - terrible flat cushion like pillows but this hotel has one duvet over the top of a topper pad like the last. But not 2 single pads so thats nice. Had the first bath we have had in a month! And then we fell into bed!
