A special day!

Today was an interesting and excitement filled day. So remember how I mentioned previously that the sun rises ridiculously early? Throw in some jet lag, time change differences, and a long nap we all took yesterday evening and you have a a bunch of early risers. We were all up before 6am. Thankfully, the hotel offers free breakfast which was very appreciated. It was a nice spread of procuitto, cheese, biscuits, toast, granola, fruit, and some cucumber and tomatos. I made a procuitto, cucumber, and tomato open faced sandwich with some orange juice and coffee. A perfect breakfast.

We headed out to do some exploring. After going to a few of the different tour stands we chose the 2 hour archipelago tour. We boarded a nice little cruiser and headed out. Ok, call me geographically retarded but I had no idea Stockholm was actually 2 islands and Sweden was home to the world's largest archipelago. To the tune of 25,000 islands. The tour showed us a few dozen but it mostly took us out into the Baltic sea for 2 relaxing hours.

While on the cruise, we met a girl from Switzerland named Nicole who was taking a similar trip. She had been in Sweden for 3 days already and after was heading Copenhagen. In fact, she is going to be in Copenhagen when we are so we agreed to meet up and sightsee together! But that wasn't the best part. She was touring by herself so after the cruise we invited her to join us for lunch! We asked her what she was doing for the rest of the day and she said that she was going to a soccer match. It was a match between 2 Swedish clubs. It was an exhibition match but there were still going to be "hooligans there" as she was so excited to see. The guys were all excited so asked if she minded if we tagged along. She was happy to invite us so we met up with the hostess from the hotel Nicole was staying at, Emma, and headed out to Solna to watch the soccer game!

It was about a 15 minute subway ride and the subway dropped you off right outside the stadium. It's a beautiful stadium that holds about 35,000 people. The game was not sold out but the fanatics showed up. The only was I can describe these guys is they are ******* NUTS!!! Seriously. N.U.T.S. It was so much fun to see one of these matches in person because they put American sports fans to shame. The yell the entire game, chanting, taunting, giving the 1 finger salute... The chants are all coordinated with claps, arm movement, and stomps and EVERYONE, men, women, children know them. I saw fathers with their pre-teenage sons and daughters, wearing their jerseys, chanting along. And they do it for the ENTIRE match. 96 minutes in this case. The only time they sat is at halftime and that was mostly to run to the concession stand to get more beer.

The match ended in a 1-0 loss for the team we were rooting for, Djurgarden. They are the "working class" team and the team they were playing, Hammarby, is the "rich team". The crowd was predominantly pro-Djurgarden, though the Hammarby faithful came out in force as well, taking up a majority of the opposite goal area. After Hammarby scored the lone goal, a HUGE banner dropped from the 2nd tier balcony. What is actually a bit funny is a majority of the fans wear their jerseys over another T-shirt and after the match ends, they remove their jersey and stuff it into their pants. Clearly to avoid any confrontation on the trip home. There are of course the ones who leave their jerseys on and stay after the game to chant and taunt the other team's fans. Quite honestly, I saw some guys that I wouldn't mess with even if I was armed with a gun and they were armed with a toothpick. NUTS I tell you. But the experience was surreal. It's 100 times louder than what you see on TV. You can't hear yourself think Simply awesome.

Afterwards, we took the subway back and headed back to our hotel. Emma left us in Solna but Nicole accompanied us back to the hotel and we extended a dinner invitation to her since she had no other plans. We met back up with the girls and grabbed a quick sandwich and potato dinner at a cafe nearby. The girls hit some of the museums I was hoping to see so I will have to do those tomorrow or Tuesday. After dinner, we said goodbye to Nicole and came back to the hotel to catch up on some well needed rest. It's been a day to remember for sure. I can only hope tomorrow is as eventful and interesting as today!

I'll let you know! :)