Eurotrip 2012 - Day 11 (6/25) - To Stockholm

We had planned on going to the Olympic Stadium and maybe the nearby amusement park, but my laundry fiasco prevented either of those things from happening. I started the single load of washing without issue around 11 and then we checked out around 11:30, 30 minutes late. I then put my clothes in the dryer around noon. When I returned about 45 minutes later, though, they were not any drier. I thought this was because I had chosen too cool of a setting (I had uses the second warmest), so I chose the hottest setting and tried again. By the time I found out that this didn't work any better (the dryer was spinning without any heat), the other two driers were occupied, and more people were washing clothes. I basically had to wait around in the laundry room for another hour in order to snag a drier that worked, and then wait for the clothes to dry. Steffi eventually gave up on waiting around for me, and rightfully so, and took a taxi to go see the Olympic Stadium.

I wasn't done with my laundry until about 3:30, and by then it was just about time to head to the airport. Steffi met up with me after failing to get into the stadium - it was apparently closed for the European Athletics Championships. Since it was raining, we decided to take a taxi to the airport instead of walking to the train station and taking the Finnair bus. On the ride I realized that I forgot to return the laundry room key to the hostel front desk (and reclaim my €10 deposit) - I gave it to Steffi to send back to the hostel for me. At the airport we had time to grab sandwiches for a late lunch before Steffi had to board her plane a little after 6. After saying goodbye I walked 3 gates down to prepare to board my 6:55 flight.

After landing I took the Arlanda Express to Stockholm's Central Station, then took the metro to Radmansgatan. In the process, I bought a metro pass for 200 Swedish Kronor/crowns (~$28) which allowed up to 8 rides - so as low as 25 SEK per ride, vs. 44 SEK for a single ride. I had another flirt with fame when the lady at the metro ticket counter asked if I "played something" (music or sports), commenting that I looked like I did. In any case, I was able to find Hotel Birger Jarl fairly easily using my phone, and was checked in by 8:30. I stayed in for the rest of the night - I hung up my still mildly damp (from the nonfunctional dryers) clothes to fully dry and planned out some activities for the next day using guides that I had picked up from the airport tourist info center.