Today is the final full day of my holiday and Mark and I are in Stockholm. I have written this before: when I am on holiday alone, I write more frequently. When I travel with Mark, I rarely find the time to. I am about to go book shopping on this sunny day so will write only a brief entry and since I have no books to read (yet) I might just spend my flight time composing blog posts. I did this two years ago (on a ship) while en route from Tristan da Cunha to Cape Town. Although I only had a brief time in South Africa before I caught my flight home later that same day, I still had enough time to upload my blog posts, even with photos. Expect more detail, and photos, from the highlights below:

I met with four of my Helsinki friends and the final meeting on our last day in Finland was at the home of Antti Lehtinen and his family. Antti is the drummer for Ultra Bra and Scandinavian Music Group. We had long talks about Helsinki and architecture and Antti’s neighbourhood. Had Mark not been with me, we wouldn’t have talked about any of this.

Mark and I toured Turku, Finland’s oldest city and former capital. We walked to the famous castle, and along the Aura River. We even took the new funicular–I was surprised to see that it was free to ride.

The eleven-hour ferry ride from Turku to Stockholm climaxed with the daring jump off the sixth deck into the harbour by a passenger who had either drunk a bit too much, or was trying to impress a young lady he had met on board (likely both). More details on this later, for sure. One thing that will haunt me for life though is the scream the young man’s mother made when he had jumped off.

We bought a weeklong transit pass for Stockholm and have been using it everywhere, even for short trips. I however like to walk the length of pedestrian-only Drottninggatan even though there are subway stops along it. I have already visited the Postal Museum, yesterday I went to the ABBA Museum (pardon me, it’s ABBA–The Museum; even the locals make fun of this alteration in nomenclature) and the Swedish Parliament, and tonight Mark and I are going to the Photography Museum. I loved ABBA–The Museum; it is definitely the hit of the museum scene here. Last night we went to the outskirts to Solna for an Indonesian dinner.

Keep tuning in to this blog as I will post more details, especially about the cruise ship jumper.