Saturday, 29 September, 2018 – Nice Looking Day
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There was lots of discussion about when we should go to the station. The vote by the other 3 was for a couple of hours early. Ryan, Tanika and I take the tram with the luggage to the station while Julie walks there with Tanika’s carry-on. We all arrive at about the same time.
After a while, another 3-1 vote sent us downstairs to be near the train and with less comfortable seating conditions. It was another case of hurry-up and wait. Then when they finally call us to the train there are zillions of people ahead of us. we are in first class and have reserved seats but the problem is that it is difficult to find storage for the baggage, as it is on all train rides in Europe. Ryan crams the bags into the overhead storage and wedges them in enough so that they won’t fall out. Finally we are off.
It was a long ride. Julie and I were seated opposite a nice Canadian couple in my age bracket. The guy had studied at Oxford and stayed in Kebel College, which is where we stayed while at Oxford last year. I had mentioned that I used to play Bridge and the lady kept coming back to it with me asking about things I knew nothing about since it had been 18 years since I had last played. I did manage to do a bit of Blogging using the trains Wi-Fi.
When we arrive in Stockholm, Ryan leads us on a great circular route to our Hotel. I found it quite tiring. On the street we bump into the Canadian couple who had also gone the wrong way. They were staying in the old town where I thought we were staying, Instead we were in an area of town obviously designed for younger people. I had been to Stockholm several times 10+ years ago but I did not know this area at all.
This was a massive Hotel with an estimated 800 rooms. They were able to do this by making the rooms very small.
We had looked at the Hotel menu on the train and thought that would be a good place to eat dinner. It was about 6:30 but the staff told us there were no seats available until after 9:00. There were lots of table empty but basically there were not enough staff to clean them and get the next seating in. The staff in general were very nice at the front desk, the cleaners and in the dining room, there were just not enough of them.
Any way, we asked for advice where we could go to and got a few recommendations that were nearby.
Service was very slow – getting a table, getting a menu and a very long time placing our order. It was the same problem as in the Hotel – they did not have enough staff. We finally got our wine. A few other couples came in, experienced these kind of delays and eventually walked out.
My memory of Stockholm was that it took a long time from when the order was placed to when the food was delivered. This proved to be the case here as there was only one cook in the kitchen. We were backed up behind a large group order which were finally delivered after a lengthy delay, so we thought that we were to have another lengthy delay but our meals came out just after.
Veal Oscar is a famous dish which I had a lot in the USA. It has a veal steak, lobster on top, here it was a few prawns, asparagus and béarnaise sauce – here it was a spicy Hollandaise. I exchanged my asparagus and tomato for Julie’s bacon. It was an OK meal for me.
We returned to the Hotel and went to sleep. At least it was quite quiet, which was a surprise as they seem to do everything else on the cheap.