My Travels and Other Stories

New Year's resolutions

I have a day off work and am just chilling out after the New Year's Eve. I had one of the best New Year's Eves in a long time. I'm glad I fought my laziness and self-indulgence and got out of the house and my comfort zone. I've decided that this year I will be more positive. People who know me will know how hard that can be for me sometimes. So keep your fingers crossed... :-)

And to start the new year with a clean table I'm going to sort out this blog and get it ready for my next travel adventure in a couple of weeks time.

So here it goes...


Destination Wimbledon

25th-26th June 2008

So it was finally Wednesday night, 25th June 2008, the day I'd been looking forward to for quite some time. I came home from work, packed my suitcase and went to the coach station for the overnight coach to London. The journey wasn't too bad, I managed to get a few hours sleep, despite a break at the services every two hours. We arrived to London on Thursday morning, at 6:30am. I went to the hostel, which I'd booked earlier, and left my suitcase there. Then finally took the tube to Southfields and joined the long queue at around 9am. Shortly afterwards I got a queue card with number 06024, which meant that there were 6023 people queuing in front of me! If queuing was an Olympic discipline, the British team would get a gold medal every time, I'm sure. I don't really like queuing but queuing for Wimbledon tickets it's something else. It's quite fun. At first you stand or sit on the big grass field of Wimbledon Park, where the stewards organize neat lines of people and some youngsters are trying to sell you a variety of newspapers with free gifts such as pens, radios, binoculars in a shape of a tennis ball or plastic ponchos (which are usually needed), only these to be taken off you when you go through the security checks as these items are not provided by the official sponsors of the Championship. At about 9:30am the turnstiles open and the queue starts moving. It never seemed to me like 3 hours of queuing but by the time I finally bought the ticket and entered the grounds of the famous All England Lawn Tennis Club it was 11:50am! The play on the show courts (Centre and No.1 courts) starts at 1pm but on all the outside courts (16 of them) it starts at 12 o'clock. The first hour I hardly see any tennis as there was so many people around that I couldn't get to the courts and even at the practice courts was a massive queue. Later on, when people with show court tickets went to their seats, I managed to see some good matches and a few good players practising. Unlike the last couple of years, I didn't see any of the top players, except from Jelena Jankovic (world no.2) but she is not one of my favourites. I also watched some doubles matches, hoping to learn something from them for my league matches. ;-) I stayed there until about 8:30pm and then walked to the Southfields tube station. By the time I got to the hostel, it was already quite late. I only managed to spend a half an hour on the Internet, have a shower and go to bed. I was so tired that I fell asleep at 11pm and woke up at 7:15am, when my alarm clock went off.

27th June 2008

After I got up and had a breakfast, I packed my suitcase and went to the hotel, where I was going to spend the next night. It took me an hour on the tube to get there, had to change the lines twice. I left my suitcase there and went to Wimbledon again. This time I got there at around 10am and got a queue card number 07670, which didn't look good. The stewards were telling us from the beginning that we most likely won't get in until other people leave, which is usually about 5pm! That didn't sound good at all. I didn't want to spend all day in a queue, even if it was at Wimbledon. I wanted to watch some tennis. I started thinking about a plan B. But at the end I stayed. At 12:15pm they told us that the grounds were full. But they also said that the Health & Safety department might allow some more people in at 1pm when the play on the show courts start. At 12:55pm we were told that another thousand people will get in and that included me. Unfortunately, it started to rain and the play was suspended. We waited another two hours before we finally got in just before 3pm. I went around the grounds and watched a few games here and there before sitting on the Henman Hill and watching the 3rd round match between Serena Williams and Amelie Mauresmo. Amelie was playing quite well, considering she was injured, and Serena was getting frustrated. Unfortunately, Amelie lost the first set in a tie-break (7:5) and the second set was much more one-sided. Amelie asked for a trainer, who strapped her already strapped injured thigh, but that didn't help much. She lost 6:1. After that match it was Ana Ivanovic, the new world number 1, on the big screen. Surprisingly she lost to Chinese Jie Zheng in two sets. This year's Wimbledon was full of surprises. And that was only the first week.

When I got to the hotel, I got ready to go out for a meal with a couple of friends, who came to London that night. Unfortunately they went without me so I watched TV in my bedroom and went to sleep early, needed to be fresh for the next part of my holiday travels.

Next stop... Stockholm

28th June 2008
After a good night sleep (at last!!!) I packed my stuff and left the most expensive hotel I've ever stayed in. Because the breakfast wasn't included I stopped at the local supermarket and bought some food for the day. Then I finally took the tube to the Liverpool Street train station from where I got the Stansted Express for the Stansted airport. It was interesting to see how much the airport expanded since I was there last time, 6 years ago. It was just a shed in the middle of nowhere. It still looks like a shed but much bigger, with all the duty free shops and stuff. Our flight was an hour delayed, apparently due to the late arrival of the aircraft, but we could see that the plane arrived quite in time and was being unloaded and uploaded again. It was the first time when I could see why my suitcase is always somehow damaged after each flight. The way the baggage handlers deal with the luggage is rather careless, throwing them around and even some of them fell off the belt on the way to the aircraft. Anyway, when we finally boarded the plane I realized that I probably couldn't escape the children around me, even on holiday. A family with about 2 year old girl was sitting right behind me and over the aisle was a mother with a tiny baby, probably only a couple of months old. I love children really but on the plane it's different. I mean some of them are fine but some of them are just horrid and the parents don't do anything to stop them, entertain them or distract them. Then I think they should have their own section on the plane, behind a soundproof wall. ;-) After we took off and the girl stopped screaming and kicking my seat, the flight was actually quite alright. I had a nice view of the Swedish countryside with its farms, lakes and forests as far as you can see. Skavsta airport is about 100 km south of Stockholm. It's just a runway and a terminal building looking more like a barn in the middle of nowhere, just fields and forests around it. After about 80 minutes of a bus ride I finally arrived to my favourite city, Stockholm. I checked in the hostel and then I went for a walk through the narrow streets of the Old Town (Gamla Stan). I was so excited to be there again. It brought back the great memories of 6 years ago when I was there with my friends. This time I was there alone, feeling sick and dizzy, probably due to not eating and drinking much all day. Staying on a boat, even if it's docked, is not the best when you feel sick already. But I managed to get to bed and fell asleep almost immediately.

29th June 2008
I slept like a baby for almost 10 hours! And I only got woken up by my alarm clock because I wanted to have a breakfast in the hostel and it was served only till 10 o'clock. I ate as much as I could, a bowl of cereals with strawberry yoghurt and a bread roll with ham and cheese. Then I set off for a day of sightseeing. For this day I planned to just chill out in the great weather, sit by the water and see the changing of the guards (that's a must!!) and finally get to the top of the City Hall tower. And that's exactly what I did. I've seen the changing of the guards four times now and I still think it's amazing. Unfortunately this time the band, which plays during the whole ceremony, wasn't on the horses as it usually is. And even the soldiers didn't arrive on the horses. When everything was over I went to talk to one of the guards and asked him why there were not horses there that day. He said "the horses are not at home, they are on the grass, they are on vacation in July". I thought it was quite cute and had to smile at the idea of horses on vacation. Another interesting thing about this changing of the guards was how many women soldiers were there. Sweden obviously took the gender equality seriously.My next stop was the City Hall tower. I'd been to Stockholm three times before but never managed to get there for one reason or another. But this time I did. There is a lift to the middle of the tower and then a some kind of corridor just behind the walls of the square tower. It didn't really feel like climbing up the tower. The view from the top was fantastic. After I took lots of pictures I climbed down again and chilled out at the garden next to the City Hall and the water. The last stop that day was another viewpoint, Katarina Hissen. After that it was back to the hostel, which was only 2 minutes from there. I shared a cabin with two Spanish girls and it was the night of the football European championship. They were getting ready to go to one of the Stockholm's parks to watch the finale on a big screen. When they got back I don't know, I was fast asleep by midnight and woke up at 10 o'clock.

30th June 2008
This time I decided to go to the local supermarket and buy some food there instead of paying for the breakfast in the hostel. I had a breakfast on a bench by the water and then went back to Katarina Hissen to take more pictures as I couldn't take them the night before because of the sun setting right into the camera. On the way back it started to rain and in about 10 minutes, it took me to get back to the hostel, I was absolutely soaked. After the thunderstorm the weather got better again but it wasn't that hot anymore. I spent the afternoon walking in the Old town again, going through the little shops and just chilling out. I was feeling kind of lonely though. I went back to the hostel and fell asleep at 8:30pm, fully dressed. Woke up at 9pm only to change into my pyjamas and by 10pm I was back asleep.

1st July 2008
I slept till 8 o'clock when my alarm clock went off. In those three nights in Stockholm I slept more than I usually sleep all my working week!! I had to check out by 10 o'clock so I packed my stuff, which was quite difficult considering the size on the cabin and three of us trying to pack all at the same time.
The weather was beautiful, the sky was blue and I was leaving Stockholm. I had plenty of time to get to the airport so I had breakfast on a bench by the water and then walked to the bus station through the Old town, dragging my suitcase behind me on the cobbled streets. No wonder the little wheels looked "a bit tired" by the end of my holiday. I took a bus to Bromma airport from where I was flying to Umeå. The flight was only about an hour long and I was hoping to take some nice pictures from the air but it was cloudy until we got up north. My friend picked me up from the airport and together with her two children and her mum we drove to their house. During the journey, which took about 45 minutes, I already admired the endless forests all around. And the better was going to come.
I was staying with my penfriend. We have been writing to each other since we were 19 and 20 (so for quite a long time ;-)) but we never met. I was a bit nervous at first but not much because it felt like we somehow knew each other.