Today was the day to try a real bike ride. So we went to the local store to get some cash out to buy bus tickets. Long story short, we ended up riding all over the island and then when we got to the bus stop we discovered it was card payment..... And then the bus arrived before we'd managed to work out the system. Luckily the bus driver said just hop on, put the bikes in the back. We were ???? so he came around the back and showed us the special bike rails on the back of the massive bendy bus and watched us tie it on securely. As an aside, one thing that really amazed me was that everyone in Sweden and Denmark, bus and truck drivers included speaks excellent English. In fact the older generation (I'm talking 70-80 year olds) speaks better English than the 20 years olds.
Anyway we caught the bus to Brommaplan then decided to ride in from there. Brommaplan is where Stockholm's main airfield is located and is the equivalent of being outside the M25 or peripherique. So we started our ride in an industrial area and I thought to myself, what a stupid idea to ride this far into town. We crossed several bridges with great vantage points on the city and were in the centre in 8kms. Well with a little stop off at a beach to eat lunch and bemoan our lack of forethought in not bringing our bathers! A lot of Sweden (so far) seems relatively new, even for us Aussies, but really very nice. The lovely city hall was built in 1915. Apparently the church with cast iron steeple I was admiring is actually one of the oldest, but I think the steeple is new.
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| City hall |
The weather has been unusually warm (read heat wave) so we took it pretty easy and had a few naps under trees, ending up at the Nordisk Museet at 4pm. We didn't realise that it closes at 5pm until 4.45..... It was a fascinating ethnography museum with costumes, furniture and even re-built rooms from houses. It was surprising to see how much the Swedish standard of life has increased post-WWII.
The ride back to Skaa was fine, lots of gear changing as we went up and down hills and under roads and beside tunnels wherever the bike path took us.
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| Random beached ship we saw in a canal on the way back to the airfield |
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