Arrived in Stockholm without any hiccups accept our own incompetence at how to exit the metro to get to street level. Just goes to show you, when you live in California with ‘0’ public transport those skills are relatively nonexistent. With the help of strangers who are somewhat friendly we found our way off the tracks and into our modest hotel room in the heart of old town Stockholm, otherwise known as Gamla Stan.

Our first venture out we took a ferry to the island of Djurgarden to visit the Skansen which is essentially an open air museum dedicated to the preservation of traditional architecture throughout the Scandinavian countries. It’s kind of a combination of preserved history of culture and buildings along with a zoo featuring Nordic animals such as moose, bears and reindeer along with a Nordic fox or two.

From there we went on to visit the Vasa Museum which for the Swedish is the equivalent of a “Titanic flop.” It’s a ship that took years to build and was launched in 1628. It was intended to rival it’s most powerful rival, Poland. However, seven days after it was launched, it sank due to moderate winds and faulty engineering. It has been painstakingly restored and the museum makes honorable tributes through films and tours that chronicle a time in history of a city committed to securing its safety and well-being.

Then it started raining . . but we were prepared with rain jackets and climbed aboard our ferry to get back home.

After everything that we read about delayed flights, cancelled flights, crazy lines, angry people, people that don’t wear masks, we got ourselves ready to be patient and understanding and to go with the flow. But so far our experience has been pretty seamless. Lufthansa was very clear in their pre-trip communications that everyone has to wear a mask while in flight and if you know Germans, they are a pretty compliant, rule following society. We’re happy about this as Michael and I are still ‘covid virgins.’   We’ve been vaxed and boosted but still cautious as we can reasonably be.

I’m writing this post from in the air of our second leg of our flight from Munich to Stockholm. We traveled from LAX and now have a 2 1/2 hour flight to to Stockholm. We had typical airline food dinner, a glass of wine for me and a gin and tonic for Michael, took a mild sleep aid and we both slept pretty well across the pond.

Stockholm is the beginning of our long journey where we’ll be traveling in Europe for just under 3 months. We will be visiting nine countries including Sweden, Norway, The Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Slovenia and France.

This trip started as an idea about 8 months ago when we were hopeful that covid would be more controlled and less transmissible. And here we are, new variants arising all the time and it’s still spreading all over the world. We’ve decided to take our chances!

As we started our planning and thinking about costs of this trip coupled with the fact that we needed to purchase a new car in the near future, we learned about purchase and pickup of certain overseas European car models. Enter the Volvo hybrid plugin. This overseas pickup program has been going on for a long time— whereby you purchase a new European car and take delivery on it in the country where it’s been manufactured and have it to use for the duration of your trip abroad. Volvo gives 7% off MSRP, allows you to customize your car and also offers free airfare, lodgings in a 5-star* hotel and dinner at a Michelin Star* Restaurant, all in the most un-touristy, industrial town of Gothenburg, Sweden.

We thought ‘great’ we’ll order our car, pick it up in Sweden and have a European vacation in our new car, saving money by not renting a car. Some things seem too good to be true or some things work out just they way they’re supposed to! The car isn’t ready!! We still got our free airfare!