The Ikea Challenge

Hello! On Saturday, we got up and headed to the Djurgarden island (I discovered over this trip that the Swedish language is really strange.  It looks like someone took their fist and dragged it across the keyboard of their computer (like this...dsobfgn...and just added some dots above the words.)  It's appeal was that it had gardens (it means garden island) and it had an outdoor museum that we saw on Rick Steve's Europe.  So, we began the trek from the hostel to the island.  (In case you were wondering, Stockholm is built on a serious of islands.  So, Old Town is on it's own island just like Djurgarden.  But, they are all really close together.)  First, we stopped and got breakfast at a 7/11.  I have no idea why, but there was a 7/11 on almost every block in Stockholm.  It was like a little piece of home.

It also had chairs out front cafe style.  It was a strange, but good, 7/11 experience.

Then, we continued on our walk to the island. It was a beautiful sunny day and we saw some great views. Sorry, but you're going to get a lot of pictures again on our walk.  

This is a view of part of Old Town.

Old Town

There were lots of boats everywhere.

I remembered this crown being something important.  I don't really know why.

Fun Fact: That boat is actually a hostel.

Central Stockholm

Then, we finally made it to the museum thing.  It's called Skansen and we still don't have a really good grasp on how to describe it.  It covered most of the island and had just about everything.  It had traditional Swedish (like farm style) buildings, Swedish animals, food, kiddy rides, crafts, people dressed in costume, and much much more.  It was crazy, but it was fun.  We saw all kinds of cool things.

Like this Swedish windmill. 

And this building.

We also found a farm livestock.

Here's some Swedish goats.

Then, we came across the Swedish wildlife area.

We saw some baby boars.

A really cute squirrel being fed crackers. (Katelin and I really enjoyed his pointed ears.)

They had bears.  Which is when I learned my second Swedish word: Bjorn.

All of the kids took pictures with this bear.  However, Katelin and I got kind of disdainful looks when we sat on it.  (You notice that didn't stop us from doing a photo shoot.)

Here's a very intense looking owl.

They also had a moose.  (Which there are evidently a lot of in Sweden, because they had stuffed moose everywhere.)

There were Swedish geese who weren't too friendly.

And, they had rabbits.  (The funny thing is, that the girl working the rabbit station (how awesome would that job be) saw that Katelin and I really wanted to touch one.  So, she picked one up for us to pet.  It made me really happy.)

This place also had really cool buildings.

After walking around, we got really hungry and found a place to eat.  

We both got Swedish meatballs and potatoes. They were really good.

Skansen was on a hill, so it had really great views of the city.

After the museum, we began on the official search for Ikea, which is now known to us as the Ikea challenge.  Why?  Because it is a challenge to find it.  We went back to the compute we found yesterday and looked up where it was.  We figured out that it was possible to get to it, but we just had to figure our how.  After wondering around for a while, we found a tourist information desk where a man told us that there was a free shuttle to Ikea.  He gave us directions and we went off to wait for the shuttle. We had some issues finding it, but we found another tourist information center and asked them where it was.  Once we found it, we stood to wait for the shuttle.  After about 15 minutes, we decided it probably wasn't coming and figured out (it said this one the sign) that it only ran on weekdays.  Why nobody at the information desk would tell us this?  I do not know.  

Then, we went back to the tourist information center and found out how to get there by subway.  We easily got our tickets and found our train.  And a half in hour later we ended up in Skarholmen; the home of the world's largest Ikea.  We were told that there was a bus to get to it, but at first we couldn't find the bus station.  Also, we had a slight problem with the language barrier in this town.  It was just a strange town.  Eventually, we got directions to Ikea from a shop worker the train station that were in Swede-English.  Well, we got turned around but a really nice lady helped us.  She us that "it was possible to walk there" in an its-not-possible-voice, but gave us directions anyways.  Eventually we found the bus to Ikea.  But after discovering that Ikea was the first stop, we decided to walk and hope for the best.  

Well, that lady was wrong.  It only took us 10 minutes to get to Ikea.

Here was our first glimpse at it.

Finally we arrived.  I think the huge black cloud above it is very symbolic of our pilgrimage to Ikea.

I am happy to report that it was worth it.  It was really cool to see. It had 4 floors and the spiraled down.

Here's the inside of Ikea.

We had a good time wandering around it.  They also had a food area, so we got dinner there.  It was quit tasty.  Then, we journeyed back to the train station and back to Stockholm.  By this point, we were pretty exhausted so we went back to the hostel and off to bed.