May 16, 2018 - Gianna's 14th Birthday and Tanya Arrives in Stockholm, Spending the Day in Gamla Stan, Sweden

Elisa's Daily Scoop
Covering Long Island & NYC Boroughs
CURRENTLY IN: GARDEN CITY, NY
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Gianna's 14th Birthday

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My birthday girl and her little sis in March (c) travelincousins.com

Happy, Hump Day and an even bigger Happy, Happy Birthday to my daughter, Gianna, as she celebrates her 14th Birthday!!!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY GIANNA!

We wasted no time getting the day going today!

After making a quick lunch for my girls for school, we hurried off to Dunkin' Donuts to get a big batch for Gianna to bring to school to celebrate her birthday! 

I'm sure her classmates will appreciate these!

With all the rushing, I didn't get a chance to snap a photo of the birthday girl, but, I'll get plenty tonight!

I did however, greet her this morning as she woke up with a bag of Godiva goodies!!

Chocolate goodies for Gianna for her birthday today (c) travelincousins.com

After me and Punkin dropped Gianna & Kelsey off at school, we headed over to Trader Joe's.  I was unable to go last night because we had a pretty nasty thunderstorm.  

(Oh, and speaking of which, we lost power for about two hours.  I was thrilled it was only for a short period because the electric company had advised that we would not have power until 6am this morning! I guess they worked extra hard!)

Next, to Stop & Shop to get Gianna's birthday "pie."  I decided to get a chocolate cream pie since they were out of her favorite Oreo cookie cake.  I'll try to get that for the weekend.

Out of her favorite Oreo Cake, I settled on a yummy looking Chocolate Cream Pie!! (c) travelincousins.com

Chocolate Cream Birthday Pie (c) travelincousins.com

With the school play Friday night, the girls have rehearsal until 5pm today, AND, since tomorrow is the Social Studies Fair, Kelsey will need to finalize her project this evening. 

As a result, things will be a bit of a rushed evening. But, our little trio will have a very nice dinner of Baked Ziti Siciliana! - that's traditional baked ziti with eggplant!

T&F Pork Store in Franklin Square was the next stop, for the eggplant.  Unfortunately, I do not have time to make the fried eggplant from scratch, so I'm cheating and buying it pre-cooked.  

Love this Italian Deli! Has all my favorites here!! (c) travelincousins.com

Me, with Johnny at T&F this morning. (Wow - I never realized how short I am!! lol) (c) travelincousins.com

​John and his staff are always so friendly and helpful!! I also grabbed some Italian rainbow cookies for our little food fest this evening!!

Once I got back home, I went to work on preparing  the baked ziti and put it in the oven to bake.

My Baked Ziti Siciliana pre-baked (c) travelincousins.com

Fully Cooked!! (c) travelincousins.com

My last "to do" for the kids today is to finalize Kelsey's Joan of Arc costume for the Social Studies Fair tomorrow.  Ugh, as of this writing, it's only 10am and I'm bushed already!!

Today also happens to be my Dad's birthday as well!  So, a big shout out to my dad!!

           HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAD!!

We're having a family dinner together on Sunday, once the craziness of the week has passed!

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​Tomorrow, I will have freed up a tiny bit and I'm looking forward to bringing you some interesting bits of info as it relates to National Bike Month!!!

I'll also be "virtually" traveling with Tanya to fill in some informational facts about the places she is visiting this week!!

Hoping it's a good one for you!!!  Can't wait to celebrate tonight with my girls!!!

-E
xoxo

Tanya's Daily Scoop​​
Covering the West Coast & the World
NEXT TRIP DEPARTS TODAY: POLAND, GERMANY & MORE

Tanya Arrives in Stockholm, Spending the Day in Gamla Stan, Sweden

Hi Guys, 
Tanya landed at Arlanda Airport in Stockholm and took the train to Gamla Stan, which is  the oldest part of Sweden. 

After spending the day in Gamla Stan, she will arrive into Germany late tonight and visit Peenemunde, the World War II bomb site and museum first thing in the morning, before driving into Poland.

Check back later, as she will be posting!! -E

Hey hey hey! Lookie who it is...it's meeee Travelin' Tanya and boy have I had quite the travelin' couple of days. 

The past 2 days kinda got all smooshed together for me. I don't know if I'm coming or going. LOL

Thanks to Elisa for leaving you guys an update for me. I was able to chat with her immediately upon landing in Stockholm.

It must've been something like 8am in NY and she had given my a laundry list of things that she had already done and of course with it being Gianna's birthday there was still so much more for her to do.

​Now before I go any further, I want to send a big  HAPPY BIRTHDAY wish to Gianna! ​

Now back to Sweden!  

Hej på er (‘hi guys’ in Swedish),

We landed late and therefore lost an hour, but we were immediately off and running (well not literally running). We purchased tickets at a little snack market for the Arlanda Express - the fastest way into the city. ​

Then WHOOSH, the next thing ya know we were at the Central Station in Stockholm. While on the train the attendant had noted that we only had a o/w fare vs a return ticket (which is what I asked for) and thus now needing to purchase another o/w ticket and paying quite a bit more ($25 per person was the extra amount paid).

So as it was suggested, I went to the ticket off to hopefully exchange the ticket and save $50 (which is a lot for what we are paying for - keep in my we are in Sweden and everything costs MORE!)

But once at the ticket counter we were told that we needed to go to the snack shop since they issued the tickets. And so I did. But alas there was no luck there either. I was told that I would have to go back to the original location and take it up with them. UGH!!!   Leaving us no choice but to purchase another set of o/w tickets and deal with the extra amount paid at a later time.

We finally then ventured out of the train station and decided to stroll around (as it was allow us to "get lost") and see more of the sights along the way to Gamla stan that were pretty although I don't always know what exactly I'm looking at or taking a picture of.

Sights in Stockholm (c)travelincousins.com

Riddarhurset - The House of Nobility in Stockholm (c)travelincousins.com

Sights in Stockholm (c)travelincousins.com

Riddarholm Church - the burial church of the Swedish monarchs (c)travelincousins.com

Gamla stan, The Old Town), until 1980 officially Staden mellan broarna (The Town between the Bridges), is the old town of Stockholm, Sweden.

The town dates waaaay back to the 13th century, and consists of medieval alleyways, cobbled streets, and archaic architecture. How completely charming if you ask me!

I love European old towns (c)travelincousins.com

And it was just my luck that the moment we entered the old town the first thing that caught my wandering eye was a bakery, and lo and behold it was a mostly vegan bakery - Naturbageriet Sattva Gamla Stan and you know that we of course walked away with some yummies!!

Chocolate Croissant (c)travelincousins.com

Cute little bakery (c)travelincousins.com

We continued strolling and snapping pictures until we reached the water and then continued to stroll and snap away.

Stockholm sights (c)travelincousins.com

Sights of Stockholm (c)travelincousins.com

Sights of Stockholm (c)travelincousins.com

We are definitely coming back to explore more of Stockholm! (c)travelincousins.com

Of course in that period you know that Dave had to pick up his post card. But did you know the post office or PostNord in Sweden made a huge changes to the postal service back in 2000 and replaced Posten's numerous post offices with a franchise net of postal service points, run by grocery shops and petrol stations. Postal Service Centres, run by Posten, are maintained for business clients only.
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This is not the type of news Dave likes to hear. Dave strives for the perfect stamps on the perfect postcard and then makes all viable attempts to then get then hand cancelled. Sorry Dave that was just not in the cards or postcard here in Sweden!

We did as much as we could in the time given. We still had yet another flight to take. Getting us to Germany later tonight. 

So we hopped a cab and took it back to the Central Station, made our way to the Arlanda Express only to find out that there has been a power outage right outside the city and that all trains have been cancelled!!!

Lines everywhere (c)travelincousins.com

What a mess! (c)travelincousins.com

Waiting and waiting for the trains (c)travelincousins.com

Uhhhh YIKES!

There were lines everywhere. The taxi lines were barely moving. It was gonna take at least 30+ minutes at a minimum to get through the taxi line. We all know that if I stood there that I'd have gone NUTS!

So we left the train station altogether and I went across the street and hailed a cab New York style!

Here is an excellent tip that I was given while almost attempting to wait in the taxi line: 

When going to the Airport to ONLY use either Taxi Kurir or Stockholm Taxi - all of the others are black market and will charge double! 
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The minute the cabbie started driving, Dave started dozing!

And because of all the traffic which was also probably because of the whole mess with the trains not running, it took us over and hour and fifteen minutes to arrive at the terminal.

Arlanda Airport (c)travelincousins.com

We still had time and I'm gonna have to get use to the sunset being so late over here, otherwise it might screw me up! LOL

Anyhow the flight got delayed anyway and we got in so late that the Alamo rental counter was just about to close. Whew - we made it!

Berlin SXF airport (c)travelincousins.com

Off to Peenemunde in the morning and then into Poland in the afternoon. I'll let you know how that all goes when I bop back on here from Poznan, Poland.

But for now I will say Goodnight!
​-Travelin' Tanya