Tracy-Shane-Trips

Today’s our last day. A gorgeous day in Stockholm after a drenching rain early in the morning. Shane and I went down to breakfast around 10 and then went out to walk to the first of two studios he wanted to visit. We considered taking the car, but Shane did some mapping, and it wasn’t that far. We walked through the old city again, and I took this video. I thought you might like to see the skinny and cobbled streets. This area is walkers-only, so we didn’t have to fight the cars, bikes, or scooters. Along the way, I got a great shot of the Royal Palace from a bridge across one of the waterways.

So we got to Embark, and Shane rang the buzzer and explained who we were, but they were not interested in any visitors. We expected that, but I was half-hoping they would invite him in.

So we started back to the hotel and walked through this gorgeous park called Kungsträdgården, or King’s Garden. It’s kind of across the water from the Palace. We were going to stop at the Volvo dealer and get Mom a new car to be delivered from Sweden, but….

Here’s another cool shot of the Palace from another direction. It’s like right in the middle of town, which was kind of cool but also weird.

We went back to the hotel for a few hours to cool off and relax, then went out again to catch the afternoon visiting hours at Mojang. The studio is best known for developing Minecraft, which is the best-selling video game of all time. Shane has been playing their game since he was 7. He mentioned, while we were there, how amazing it is that this company, which was acquired by Microsoft Studios in 2014, has built such a following from just one game. There are also spin-offs called Minecraft Dungeons and Minecraft Legends. Mojang Studios was founded by the independent Swedish video game designer Markus Persson in 2009, which I didn’t know until I looked it up for this trip. I’m sure Shane knew that, so I didn’t mention to him that I didn’t know. We were only there for about 15 minutes; kind of anti-climactic.

Shane then picked our lunch spot. He chose Mahalo (https://mahalosthlm.se/), a healthy, plant-based restaurant with a cool back patio. We decided to sit at the tables by the street and people-watch. I got the chili and sweet potato fries with a chocolate banana smoothie, and Shane got the Golden Glow smoothie bowl and shared mine when he finished his.

It’s only 4pm here, but we are done for the day. A lot of walking today, and we’re both tired. We’ll probably do the local pub for dinner, which is a quick walk from the hotel. We check out of the Hilton tomorrow at midday and head to the airport hotel to drop off our bags and return the car. We have a super early 740am flight on Sunday, so it made sense to get all that done Saturday and relax. The Radisson is right at the airport; we can get up and check in to our flight at 530-600am with very little effort.

Thanks for reading about our adventures. It’s been so much fun for me to share them with you. Back to America and regular life in 48 hours. Happy to be going home but also sad that it’s over. Tracy