Stockholm

Three perfect days in Stockholm are about done, we leave for Amsterdam tomorrow morning on the plane. We arrived Monday night and were so excited when Sandra and her boyfriend Yassir picked us up, especially because we flew in at 11:30pm!
The first two days were beautiful weather, cold and clear to walk all around town.

Sandra had Tuesday off work and school and so took us via the train system into town, she lives in a beautiful apartment in Huddinge just outside of Stockholm. Of course, we forgot the camera the first day but just Josh and I returned Wednesday to take what we missed. On Tuesday we were watching the changing of the guards at the castle and the youngest princess drove out and right by us! We would have never known, but Sandra recognized her imediately, apparently it is very rare for regualar people to see them in person. This is not the one who will be crowned Queen and therefore is allowed to drive by herself.

Wednesday we took the boat shuttle across another island part of Stockholm, the city is made up of 14 total islands most connected by bridges. We found the Vasa museum where the Vasa ship,a Swedish warship, sunk in the harbor in 1627 and was salvaged 333 years later. Now the ship is 95% original and was actually very amazing to see and learn about! Plus, there was an English tour so we understood what we were seeing.
Today Josh, Sandra and I took a boat through the Archipelago and´stopped at Sandhamn island. There are about 130 small islands off the East coast and many people have vacation homes for the summer on them. Although it was very rainy and windy, we braved the cold under layers and walked around the island. After an amazing lunch of Sill (herring) fish they eat for celebrations such as Midsummer and Christmas time. Sandra and I had Swedish pancakes and Josh tried another traditional dish of flat fish.
Tonight we saw the lights of Stockholm at night with the four of us going into to town for dinner and to look around, getting the full city naration we could only find from those who grew up here!
An amazing trip and we will get pictures up soon. I am going to try to link a new Flickr site here for pictures from Berlin to see if it works. Pictures from Sweden are up on facebook (Mom and Dad, sign up for facebook and add josh as a friend to see ALL the pictures! haha). Let us know if the links work.
We will check in from Amsterdam
http://www.flickr.com/photos/31496133@N08/?saved=1

Berlin

A quick morning post, it has been a slower morning around here today hanging in the hostel, comptuer time, cleaning up and a little sink laundry! Jetting up to Stockholm tonight, leaving Berlin about 10 pm and Sandra picking us up at the airport up North at midnight!

We caught a really good free walking tour, about 4 hours long, yesterday morning. Through out we met English speakers from all over the world and saw, ah hard to use these keyboards! the Berlin Wall, stood on Hitlers Bunker, went to Checkpoint Charlie, saw the Hotel Adler next to Embassys from around the world where Michael Jackson was caught holding the baby over the railing, the US Embassy that was just moved and opened this 4th of July. I guess they wanted a more secure place and asked the city of Berlin to move the whole street, with the Berlin wall shown in stone in it and Brandenburg Gate; the gateway between East and West Germany, so there wasn#t a public street so close. Berlin refused and the US finally decided to move in anyway this summer. We saw the Reichstag, Book Burning memorial where the Nazis burned tens of thousands of books they dissagreed with and the Humbolt University where Eintein taught for 20 years and 28 Nobel Prize winners graduated from, and now they sell the books that were burning in the Book Burning everyday infront of the university. Then we saw Potsdamer Platz, Museum Island and more! sorry the punctuation bad, this keyboard VERY different, cant find it all...
Afterwards we saw the Pergamon Museum with one of the 7 wonders of the world, all the Antiquity Collections of statues and art from BC... We are picking up a few german words and figuring out the Bus and underground subway type systems!.figured out by taking a good portion of them, often for 1 or 2 stops before figuring out we were not going where we thought or wanted and therefore have seen MUCH more of the city than planned haha.
Apparently the President of Germany lives on Pucklerstraße where we are!!! Therefore the houses and secutiry around here is intense. Weve learned things like your pointer to show the number one at home often means 2 here, meaning we got 2 orders of fries with 2 forks last night and such...
Time to check out, trying to figure out where our airport is for later and if we can or shoudl leave our bags here at the hostel or carry them all day.

Christa and Josh