Wowz.

That was an amazing weekend. Went to Stockholm with E. on friday evening. We had the "party boat" (or more plainly, the evening boat to Stockholm from Turku).

The boat left the harbour at 21:00, so unfortunately I could not enjoy the Turku archipelago. I did see ALOT of ice on the way though. Most of the "inner waters" between Turku and Stockholm were iced up.

Well, the boat trip was quite funny. We walked around the various parts of the ship, checked out the taxfree shop (ok, it's marginally cheaper to get your booze from there compared to the supermarket or Alko on the mainland, but it's still darn expensive!) and bought some amazingly good Fazer Tumma suklaa (dark chocolate, whooo! My favourite).

Anyways, E. and me headed out first to the skyclub or something, some place to hangout/chill all the way in the top of the ship. The evening was still quite young and the place deserted apart for some personell, some other stray eh.. tourists and apparently some blonde bimbo not part of those tourists. As she came over to where we were sitting shortly after our arrival on that deck. She started talking to us with a lot of blabla, all the while sipping from her wine. She acted quite drunken already, probably she was. She mentioned something about getting a phonecall, that she had to be on the ship that evening to meet alot of people. Yeah whatever. She also mentioned something about being a model, living in spain, studying to become a teacher. Well, the evening was still young and I tend to remember these kinda details. What I also remember is that she was dressed slightly provocative (slutty?) and E. and me were dying to get away from her. So we finally managed to dish up some excuse about "going to sauna" which we did.. sort of, till we found out it was € 5. Kinda sucked, ah well. We didn't go, but we sure got rid of that blond bimbo.

E. spoke out the suspicion of her being a hooker / entertainment girl.. and I guess that's what she probably was. Ah well, we saw her more often in the other party-parts of the ship, acting ridiculous and trying to hook up with every guy she could see on the dancefloor eager enough to do stuff with her. SCARY!

Anyways, I tried to sleep onboard, but well, we just ended up talking for an hour, sleep left me, although I did still feel tired, but well alas. So we headed out for some disco'ing somewhere on the ship. Very funny to see all the guys trying to get hooked up with some 'available' girl. Had a lot of fun laughing at how ridiculous alot of guys were acting and the reactions the girls gave them. (aargh! Get away creep!.. ).

We arrived early in the morning in Stockholm, with the extra bonus of having one hour extra (different timezones.. aarghl). We walked around town and I made some pictures of the city. The city is actually VERY VERY nice. Lots of old buildings part of probably quite a rich history of Sweden. The people in Stockholm are a bit rude was my impression. They would just barge straight through you without even a sideglance or apology. Sigh. Probably too used to the friendly Finns.

We walked around the old center, saw the huge palace, walked through the 'new' center, got lost in the trainstation looking for the busstops. Wanted to go to some natural park to the north of Stockholm, unfortunately it was nearing 5PM by that time, sun was virtually set, so it was too dark. We resolved on getting back to the center and grab something for dinner. After that we killed some time and finally moved on to part of the old town beyond the old center. Some dutch guy recommended for us to go to a place called "Kvaren" which was a rather nice restaurant/bar, stylish bar + weird stylish dancing in the basement. So, 3 places in one building each with it's own theme. We stayed there for most of the evening, met some swedish girls (who don't really look all that great compared to what I've seen in Finland ) and got some addresses to other party places around Stockholm. Since E. and me didn't plan on sleeping at all (why waste money on a youth hostel when your boat is leaving at 7.45am? ) so we walked over to a place called "Tivoli". Not really a good place, but at least it provided us with some entertainment bringing us closer to the 7.45am mark. 3am the place closed down and we were out on the street again. Well, we were heading over to the city center once again to go to the square with all the discos. Or at least, with a lot of discos. We never made it though. E. bought some hot dog from a street stand while I was more interesting in eating some stuff from a McD. By the time we were ready with food it was close to 4.30am already and we just headed back to the trainstation where we had stashed our bags in some locker. Tried to sleep on the wooden benches in the nicely heated station hall and round 6.30 we took off for the Viking Terminal to arrive just in time for check-in and boarding immediately (boarding started at 7.15.. whoo we arrived there at that time and could board right away!).

Unfortunately we had no cabin on the way back to turku, so we had to chill out in well, for lack of better word the "chill out" room onboard the ship. Deep chairs, not much inlike roomy airplane seats (probably business class comparable). Slept for some hours, took a nice long shower to wash of the grime and set out in search for some food. Finally came to some restaurant but they were not serving anything at the time yet thus we had te reserve a place for the evening session fro dinner. Ah, well, had some more hours to kill so we set of for the sauna. That was just so good. Although I was very tired, the sauna was good to take away some tiredness.

Then it was time for dinner, had a great meal but afterwards I almost 'collapsed' (as in, I was just sooooooooo sleepy I just had to close my eyes for some time). In order to fight the oncoming drowsiness we started walking around the place a bit. Went to the nightclub again to sit and eat the sugar-coated peanuts we bought in Stockholm and waited for the ship to arrive in the harbour of Turku again.

My gf was waiting for us to handle the beer I bought for her, so that was a welcome sight again After we split up in the city center (E. and me that is) we (T. and me) went straight to my place and I headed straight for bed.

Slept like, 9 hours.. but hmm, mostly seemed to keep T. awake due to excessive snoring. *oops*

Well, so much for my weekend in Stockholm. The filmroll isn't full yet, but I'll post a link to them as soon as I've developed the pictures.

Moro!