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On the Saturday we started our tour of Stockholm with Jenny and her boyfriend Gabriel at Drottningholm Palace, we had a pleasant walk around the huge gardens and checked out the rather out of place Chinese Pavilion.

After this we moved on to the Vasamuseet, the highlight here being the amazing well preserved 17th century warship called the Vasa. It’s problem was the Swedish Navy got carried away and added an extra level making the boat top heavy and it sunk on it’s maiden voyage. It was an amazing vessel with impressive carving taking up most of the museum. After this poor Gabriels stomach was starting to rumble so we high tailed it to a food court.

While trying to pay for our Persian lunch, the cashier refused to accept one of our Swedish notes (worth about £7) turnsout we have the old version of the 100 Kronor. It was hard for us to tell as there is very little difference in the old note apart from the metal strip was not on an old 100 Kronor.

The challenge began! The rest of our time in Sweden we were determined to spend our dodgy Kronor note (which by the way our very respectable bank back in England gave us).

Attempt number 1: ICA Supermarket
That night we decided to see if we could offload this dodgy note while buying Swedish treats. Armed with chocolate éclairs with mint coatings, big Swedish wafer chocolate bars and various other bits and bobs we smiled pleasantly at the cashier but had no luck and our 100 was refused.

Attempt number 2: Skansen Open Air Museum
Gabriel plays a game called Inner Bandy which you might know as Floorball on Sunday so Jenny, Susan and I went to visit the world’s first open air museum. There was loads here from glass blowing, to reindeer to an old traditional church everyone seems to want to get married in. The also hold a huge public sing along festival in summer which seems to be watched by much of the country. But still no luck getting rid of the 100 Kr.

Attempt number 3: Co-op supermarket
That night after having a bit of a walk around Jenny, Susan and I walked down to the local co-op. While Jenny was buying real food Susan and purchased some knäckebröd (cracker bread) and lingon berry jam. We weren’t quite adventurous enough to pick up the inglad sill (picked herring) but we did think is was worth trying to palm off this 100 kr. Unfortunately the person on the checkout didn’’t think it was worth anything at all.

Attempt number 4: Herman’s Vegetarian restaurant
We spent our last morning wondering around looking for emergency fridge magnets. Jenny had done her research and found a great veggie restaurant which please Susan to no end. What’s more they accepted our 100 Kr so finally we got rid of it. Yay!!!

We had a great time in Stockholm. So thanks heaps Jenny and Gabriel.

Today we went to visit Jenny in Sweden. She is a friend from university who studied English and got A’s while I was busy struggling my way through Calculus in my own language. Because there are no direct flights to London we took a flight from London city airport early this morning. This worked out quite well as it meant we could meet up with Susan’s friend Debbie for dinner last night at Wagamamas.

Jenny met us at the central station and got us to her place (which is very close to the city) to dump our pack and back into the old town with precision and elegance. So we managed to check out a bit of the maze of cobblestone streets in he old town (Galma Stan) and the outside of the royal palace.