Pirates Of The Baltic Sea: Trip To Stockholm| emmainlapland

Hej! 

So I went on a cruise trip to Stockholm last week and I wanted to make a little blog about my adventures as a pirate!

The cruise left from Helsinki which meant that living in Lapland, we had a long trip south before boarding the ship. We took a bus down which left at 1.30am on Sunday morning, arriving at 11.30am the same day. It was a long trip, but as it was through the night, it didn't seem so bad. 

When we arrived in Helsinki we received goody bags that included lots of fun things such a T-Shirt and patches for our overalls. If I haven't said before, we all have overalls that most students in finland have. They are coloured according to your faculty (mine are blue for erasmus) and you collect patches from participating in different events that you sew on to said overalls. The more patches you have, the more awesome you appear :3

We had a couple of hours to spend in Helsinki before getting on the boat so we spent most of that outside enjoying the warm sun that we never see in Rovaniemi and drinking pre-cruise cider. 

The cruise was called Pirates of The Baltic Sea (because we were sailing through the Baltics in order to get to Sweden) and so naturally we dressed up as pirates and drank copious amounts of duty free alcohol. Naturally. 

 

On an empty stomach, lack of sleep and alcohol, I was in bed by 11pm. But that was a good thing because I woke up hangover free in the beautiful and stunning city of Stockholm. 

When we arrived we were told to get the subway to the city centre. This was harder than it looked and we ended up walking half the way as we got terribly lost. 

However, once in the centre, the city was magical. Gorgeous architecture and too many souvenir shops - my idea of heaven. We walked around and took tourist photos of all the sites, had a tea break and spent too much money on souvenir tack. I loved it. We then went for lunch at Pizza Hut and headed back to the cruise. Our time in Stockholm was short but the main purpose I think was more the cruise than the destination. Plus we saw everything we wanted to see. 

Once back on board the ship, I suddenly realised I was knackered and the onset of a delayed hangover set in. I could not handle anther day of drinking but I did make sure I played some bingo before having an early night!  

The next day we left Helsinki at 11am and spent the next 12-13 hours on the longest journey of my life. It felt much longer than before because it was during the day, but I had done this trip before when returning from St Petersberg so I didn't anticipate how awful this particular journey home would be. It seemed to last forever but I did have a cheeky Hesburger so it wasn't all bad. Plus, we got to see a pretty epic aurora on the way too. It was quite spectacular and made up for the awful journey. 

All in all, it was a successful trip and I would love to go back... Perhaps by plane, to Stockholm. 

As a quick update of my week, I also got elected to be an Executive Officer for he student Union of my home university! The same day I had a 4 hour exam which I passed with flying colours and went bowling with friends. I also drank fancy tea, watched reindeer racing and went to sauna at least 3 times. I also found Irn Bru in a little nut/pick and mix shop in town. I'm not happy about it though because I go home next week for Easter. I could have done with this 7 hangovers ago.

However, a braw week if I do say so. 

Thanks for reading!

Emma x