Sambo

Day 7

The early morning brought me in touch with an old college buddy. Spoke to Dr. Dang and agreed to meet somewhere in the evening. Realized that there was a Thai massage place right opposite to the hotel, wo went there to check it out. They accepted only cash (which was a little bit of a problem cause neither of us was carrying too much of currency). So that was something we had to push to the back of our heads for now. 

After a relatively crappy breakfast at the hotel (it was included in the price, so we didn't want to spend outside for food), we headed to Slansen. As we walked from the train station, it was difficult to think of anything else other than how COLD the place was. We decided to take the ferry ride around the place and bought a couple tickets from the self help vending machine, only to realize that we paid for ferry by mistake...it was already covered in our train pass :(

The ferry ride was nothing to write home about and the sky was too overcast to shoot anything, so we decided to head back to Gamla Staan and walk around the place where the King's palace stands. Had it not been for the really dull grey sky, the pix might even have been nice! But all the walking around only got us feeling colder which meant we had to get into train station just for warmth. The good part about that was that the station we did get into was themed like a green grotto, so it was interesting to see how they had made up the place.

Now we had decided that we would visit every single Hard Rock Cafe (both of us have a penchant of collecting T-shirts with the logo and the place which has a HRC), so we headed to Centralen and asked for directions to HRC. We were told to go to the Rat station (Seriously!), but lo and behold, we actually were a short walk from the station to HRC. After a hearty meal and quite a few Euros spent on memorabilia (I got my John Lennon caricature charity band there as well), we headed back to Gamla Staan hoping that the skies would have mercifully relented.

What happened next was unbelievable! We walked along the side of the cathedral where the Royal couple had gotten married and onto the water reservoir behind it. As we were walking there, another lady (a tourist) was also walking around the same place. There was a lot of ice on the steps and in a tiny clearing, she was standing looking out towards the setting Sun. And as she stood there for some time, her shadow fell into the spot where the snow had melted a bit and so you could see it. This resulted in what I consider my best shot of the trip so far (and probably of my short photography career, if career is even the right word). 

Super elated with this achievement, but still cognizant of the super cold around us, we decide to head back, mainly cause Dr Dang hadn't called me yet on when to meet. Thinking that the meeting is off, we got into a train to head back only to get a call from Dang suggesting we meet him at Centralen. Supreme confusion reigned on where to meet as Centralen has way too many exits. So finally we met near the Ice Bar at the Nordic hotel. They told us that the slot is only available in 25min at 1915, so we waited around  discussing Dr Dang's Tromso visit and how he took great pictures of the Aurora.

When our turn was called, we were ushered into a place where we were given warm parkas which had gloves hanging off them and then asked to walk into this super cold refrigerator. Of course taking our cameras out and shooting meant that the gloves would have to come off. So after trying to take a few pix of a place where the entire room is made up of ice (a truly awesome place), we gave up and decided to just enjoy our drink out of the ice glass.

We couldn't stay there for long, plus the cold sure drove up the hunger. So we scouted around to find Sala Thai which sounded great for dinner. The conversation over dinner was pretty surreal, what with us discussing  Swedish relationships, Food habits, cross cultural interactions. Dr Dang sure livened it up for us.

Then it was the Tunnelbana back to Midsommerkransen and the long walk back to the hotel. The debate before we left the train station was whether we need to go for a massage tomorrow or not, cause that would decide whether we needed to withdraw money or not. Finally the decision was to go for it and so we wanted to avoid the long walk back just to draw cash. 

I was super excited to get back to the hotel to upload today's pix, mainly to see how my "greatest yet" pic had come out. It sure didn't disappoint!!!

On that high, it was a good day today and time to say good night!