Jan. 1st - Day off From Tournament

Today was a pretty laid back day.  We slept in until 7:30 am, when my phone started up and we got an email from Christie.  Mississippi Queen is the music I have linked to her emails on my phone, and it just plays until I hit a button.  Well, we were awake, so it was time to get up.

After showering and getting ourselves ready, we went down
for breakfast at about 9:00.  This was certainly the latest we had been there, but it was sort of a special day - lots of people not up, yet.  Some got back to the hotel late, although we spoke with Rita a little later in the day, and they shut things down by just after 1:30 am.  It was a great party.

With not much to do, we spent time reading and relaxing, and when the maid service came around, we decided to go for a walk around the area.  We looked in shop windows, admiring the various things that were there, as well as trying to interpret what the written words were.  I don't know if we interpreted correctly, but we thought we were getting pretty good at figuring out what the Swedish words meant in English.

Utfart - parking exit

Took a couple photos of signs that were interesting.  One sign, a slogan that Neil the Entertainer spoke of in his address at the reception, indicated a parking lot entrance/exit.  It was only good because the word means other things in English.

Rent a Chef

The other sign was for a "Rent-a-Chef" business, and I thought immediately of my parents.  That sort of service would be great for them so they could eat the kinds of food they wanted, rather than the food from their residence.

On our walk, we found a nice looking restaurant, so thought we might go there for dinner sometime.  It turns out we decided to go there that evening.  It was quite interesting, and very different from what we have been in before.  When we walked in, the girl handed us two plastic cards, like credit cards, that we used when ordering our meal.   The place was a pasta, pizza, and salad restaurant.  You had to decide what you wanted to order, go to a line-up for one or the other item, order what you wanted (thank goodness they had English menus, too), and they made it up right there while you waited.  Before starting to make it, you held your card up to a machine, and they attached your order and prices to the card, electronically.

We both had Caesar salads - one with shrimp, one with chicken - for dinner.  They were quite tasty, and provided enough so that we didn't feel over-stuffed when we were finished.  On leaving, we had to give the person at the till our cards, and that showed how much we owed.  Then we were able to pay and leave.  I'm not sure if this is a more efficient way of doing things, or if it would catch on in Kamloops.

After our walk, we ran into Rita, so asked about our information for Stockholm.  She ran up to her room and brought down our itinerary for Friday, Jan 3.  Our bus will pick us up at 6:45 am, and take us to Copenhagen Airport where we fly off to Stockholm at 8:45 am, arriving at 10:00.  It looks like our day is busy with a few tours on the agenda:

• 11:00 am- guided walk in the Old Town
• 12:30 pm - lunch at Restaurant Traskillingen in Old Town
• 1:30 pm - transfer to Vasa Museum at Djurgarden
• 2:00 pm - 40 minute guided tour and 35 minutes free time at Vasa Museum
• 3:00 - 3:30 pm - transfer to the ABBA Museum and begin an audio guided tour in 3 separate groups
• 5:00 pm - transfer to the Radisson Royal Viking Hotel for check in
• 6:45 or 7:30 pm - 45 minute visit to an Ice Bar (2 different groups)
• 9:00 pm - optional reservations at a large night club - we aren't going on that.

The next morning (Jan. 4), we have breakfast at the hotel at 6:30 am.  Then we take the high speed train to the airport at 7:50 am, flying back to Copenhagen at 9:30 am, arriving at our hotel in Malmo at about 10:50 am.  From there, our bus will be ready to transfer us to the Semi Final Games at 1:15 pm.  These look to be a couple busy days.

Apart from this, we watched a couple episodes of House of Cards on Netflix, and then because we were tired, went off to bed.