Friday, September 10, 2010

Next stop: Sweden

Up at 4am or thereabouts this morning. 7.30 flight required me to be at the airport by 5.30. Don't know why though as I had ages to sit around wishing I was still in bed. Uneventful flight to Heathrow where I had a 2 hour wait for the connecting flight to Stockholm. The huge distance between one terminal and another meant that I didn't have too much time to just sit around. two shuttle buses just to get from Terminal 1 to 5. Arrived at Arlanda airport, just outside Stockholm at about 3.30pm Swedish time - an hour ahead of the UK/Ireland. Another shuttle bus to the car hire centre. I've got a VW Golf to play with now. Manual, diesel and completely the wrong way round!
I got out of the airport at about 4.30 and headed off for Akersberga, about 40 minutes from Stockholm. Haha, took me two hours. Got lost three times. Plus it was peak hour and traffic was at a snail's pace for some of the journey. I discovered that the GPS doesn't work here - it's only programmed for the UK and Ireland. There is a map in the car though and the roads are well sign posted. I still managed to end up on the road to Oslo somehow. I didn't do too badly driving on the wrong side of the road. Only got beeped at once.
So the journey took about 14 hours all up. I'm a bit weary this evening!
100 Swedish Kronor equals just under AU$15. When I found that out I felt a bit better about the hideous price I paid for a bottle of water.
My first glimpse of Sweden from the plane showed huge expanses of very tall trees. Looking forward to getting out and about with the camera.

Later....

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