Finally here

Well, that was pretty brutal! I had 4 hours of sleep on Tuesday, got up at 5:30 on Wed, made Laird get up at 6:00 and we STILL were rushing to get to the airport, even though we had packed day before. What IS that?!? We got into Stockholm this afternoon (Thurs) and to hotel — airport is about 35 or so miles from Stockholm, better than ABQ, tho that was no comfort. I don’t sleep on planes and my pain level was blowing thru the top of the scale, so snafus at almost every point of trip was fraught with things trying my patience, of which, as you all know, I have little in the first place. Took a short nap and then we went for dinner at a French restaurant in their central train station, across from hotel, though we first tried for a seafood restaurant, but no one came to seat us so we left and found Luzette. Food was delicious: oysters (3 of Laird’s 1/2 doz), pate maison (8 different kinds of pork — whatever those are), poached char with french white sauce whose name escapes me, or at least the spelling does, and trout roe scattered throughout — don’t you love that bite of, in this case, river , not sea, when you bite into them? With veggie medley to add to sauce and a dessert that I gave to Laird. He had a pasta with various mushrooms, which he enjoyed. 1 G&T and a sparkling pink grapefruit for each — artisanal, the label said. That’s everywhere on everything it seems. Is that true or is it just saying “we don’t sell a lot”? Our hotel is nice, one of a huge Swedish chain but it is where the tour meets up so convenient. However, they have lots of elevators but not all to all the floors AND you have to use your keycard if you’re in one that goes to your floor, which no one told us about. We still don’t know why the elevator that took us to our rooms, which does not require the use of keycards, took us to our room but wouldn’t take us back down to lobby. So many reasons to be a luddite.

Tomorrow hop-on hop-off before tour meets in late afternoon. Time for bed.