The first thing I want to do is finish writing about our journey to Stockholm. The flight from Tokyo to Zurich felt very long. Time seemed to pass extremely slowly. At least the food was good on Swiss Air, and we weren’t freezing cold. The flight was also on time at both ends. It was a bit depressing though, that we approached Zurich from the top most part of Russia and flew down to Zurich in a straight line over finland! We could see we were going past Stockholm, with 2.5 hours left to go to get to Zurich. Then we knew we’d have to fly another 2.5 hours back to Stockholm from Zurich, wasting 5 hours of our time in total. If only the plane could have dropped us off in Stockholm on the way to Zurich, or at least given us parachutes.

Here is a link to some photos of Tokyo airport, and also photos of the day room we hired for about half an hour (though we paid for an hour) where we took a shower and freshened up. I also managed to get some photos of the Swiss Air plane we took to Zurich. It was parked at our boarding gate, and there was a huge window through which we could view the plane. [Link]

Next, as promised, some photos of our hotel room: [Link]

What the hell is that noise?

We went to bed at 10pm last night, I fell asleep almost instantly. An instant later (it seemed) I woke at 5.17am, to a loud, horrible noise. I said to LittleB, “What the hell is that noise?”. It was an unfamiliar loud noise, I went through the checklist in my head – Earthquake? No. Nothing was shaking. Terrorist attack? No. It was not an explosion. What it sounded like, was a bus going past slowly, only it had no wheels. It was a loud screeching sound, metallic like. There was no going back to sleep after waking up to that sound, and afterall it was the middle of the afternoon in Australia, so it seemed lazy for us to still be in bed. We got our photography gear and went outside to explore, while nobody was around. We saw then that the roads had been scraped clear of snow, so that answered our question about the unusual sound.

Here is the link to my gallery of early morning photos taken from near our hotel. I only have my laptop which has a monitor that isn’t great for editing colours, so these photos are not colour corrected at all, just resized down. If the colours and/or exposure looks off, it’s because I am using my laptop and can’t accurately edit the photos. I’ll do that when I get home. Also, a lot of photos don’t have truly interesting subjects to make them masterpieces. Just view these in the spirit of – I’m just showing you around, showing you things that I have seen whether they are worthy of being photographed or not. That goes for all trip photos I post here. [Link]

Here is a video montage of things in that area of the hotel:

LittleB touched snow for the first time today. I recorded the moment on video. See below:

Today we mostly walked around Gamla Stan (the Old Town), I took a lot of photos which I will post here tomorrow, along with a few videos. Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, which is a huge deal here, much more than in Australia. Most places will be shut, so LittleB and I will be out sightseeing, walking around (probably) deserted streets, taking more photos. Keep an eye out for Day 1 – Part 2, and my blog entry for Stockholm Day 2!

That’ll be all.