finding a hair in your organic sausage and potato salad

is really not that bad of a thing in sweden. actually, i was absolutely disgusted because i am totally hair-phobic so i dramatically threw down my fork and pushed away my plate in a 3 year-old's "i'm done with this!" kind of way ... but then my lunch turned into complimentary coffee and a cinnamon pastry. not that bad at all. we spent yesterday in mariefred, about an hour outside of stockholm in the countryside. it was a beautiful little town and we toured the city's royal castle and meandered through the city streets. my cameras (yes that is plural) have both died and the lady in the electronic store basically made up a law that Sweden has that you cannot buy an electric converter within the whole country. wtf? So I can't show pictures of all this right now. Please use your imagination :) Our tourguide in the castle was horrible; we even videotaped some of the tour to remember it. Her english was laughable -- Stephan said she was directly translating the swedish words to english and you know how funny that can sound (and how little sense it can make). For instance, she said "look at this chandelier, it looks to be gold but it is made of wood and painted to look gold. so it is not as heavy as you can say." then she'd mumble "now on to the next room, yeah." and she'd walk away. we could NOT stop laughing. I'm sure everyone loved us there. pause. not.

Then last night we went to a boat restaurant bar which was very chic and fancy and we loved. We had the car with us though so we contrived a genius plan where Stephan would drive back and return the car before drinks and then use one of our seasonal bike rental passes to rent a bike next to his house and ride it back across the river to where we were and use one of the docking stations on that side to ditch it. Worked out beautifully!! He came back sporting bright red pants "maxxing out" laughing so hard about how fun his swervy, fast, out of control bike ride was (which he also had a roadie of red wine on---> he is such an olson, lol). After too much wine on the boat, we headed in search of a cheap burger joint completely starved for food. We found one named Texas Longhorns and it couldn't have been a more perfect place. Soooo american it was funny. Julia was even convinced to eat a second dinner. :-P We got huge burgers with tons of toppings (jalapenos for me), fries, and pitchers of beer. No surprise the night didn't last much longer than that. Bellys' full and livers' aching, we headed back home around midnight. It was another really great day and today we are tired.

BUT we only have 2 days left in stockholm so we are full charge ahead to see a few things that we wanted to catch before london. today lauren and i will visit the archipelago (i am dying to see it) and stroll through the old city of gamla stan. we also really want to visit this spa in the center of the city that is supposed to be completely sick.

we miss home too (and all of you) and a special shout out to cady for her bachlorette weekend that starts today and i am sad to miss (and austin's in new orleans that charlie will surely enjoy) and amo who is celebrating her brother's wedding in cali. wow! team olson recommends full face for that one. hhahaha.

Thanks for all the emails and notes about the blog, I'm happy people are actually enjoying the silly things I'm writing.

love,
K-somethingBlonde
(i'll have to write about that nickname too one day for those of you who haven't heard the story)