Stockholm

Hello! Jared, Brian, and myself are in Stockholm this weekend. We arrived on Friday May 30th and will be leaving Sunday June 1st and spending Sunday in Frankfurt before returning to Rome Sunday evening. Stockholm is so much different than Rome! It is such a modern city. You know all those pictures of Tokyo that show flashing signs and very large television screens on the sides of buildings? Well, that is what the downtown Stockholm area is like! We ventured into town last night after a great (and expensive) dinner at a local restaurant. Our hotel is right next to the metro station, so after a 15 minute journey we arrived downtown. We walked around and checked out some different places, but called it an early night because we were pretty tired from flying for 4 hours and a busy week of classes. The thing about this place that interests me the most is this: Stockholm is so far north that the sun only set for 4 hours last night. When we finished dinner at 10:30, it had just barely crept below the horizon. When we returned to our hotel at 2:00am, it was rising again. I tossed and turned until 3:00 at which points the birds began singing and the sun was pretty much all the way up. It's amazing to see this considering in Pittsburgh (and the rest of the continental United States) this does not happen! I'll keep you posted on our trip. I just rolled out of bed and our hotel lobby has free espresso, so I'll be heading down there now!