Sweden for the Day!

This weekend was a pretty great one! Not only did I get to celebrate a friend from home's birthday Friday night, but I went to Malmö, Sweden Saturday during the day and went to a outdoor concert at Tivoli for the night!  To start off the weekend, I headed into the city around 5pm to meet up with my friend for dinner with some of her friends from class. We then went back to her dorm to get ready before going out to celebrate. It was such a fun night! Because we were taking the train to Sweden the next day, we didn't stay out too late.

Saturday morning we woke up early(ish) and headed into central station to buy our tickets for the train to Malmö. We had a little time before the train left so we grabbed coffee and a breakfast sandwich to take with us. It blows my mind that to get to another country it cost less than $25 and is a shorter train ride than it is to get to my homestay! I'm definitely still getting used to how small and easily travel-able Europe is. I mean the population of Denmark is smaller than that of the state of South Carolina just to put things into perspective.

Anyways, once in Malmö we went to Starbucks to get some wifi and figure out where we wanted to go for the day. The first stop was St. Peter's church (Sankt Petri Kyrka). I absolutely love the gothic style architecture of the churches here. The contrast between the stark white arches and the gold alter is so intricate and beautiful. There was also a really cool area in the back of church with some gravestones and a painted ceiling.

From there we headed to the King's Park where there some motes, a beautiful flower garden, windmill, and castle (Malmöhus Slott)! While from the outside the castle was underwhelming, it was only $2.50 to walk through the castle halls, multiple museum exhibitions, small aquarium and natural history exhibit. There was an exhibit on the white busses and how the castle was used as a Red Cross headquarters during World War 2. It was a very interesting part of history that I hadn't really learned about before.

After the castle, we headed back into the shopping area to get some lunch at the Swedish version of Chipotle (it was incredibly delicious) and shop around before taking the train home. That night, we went into Tivoli Gardens for what turned out to be a mini music festival with a bunch of different Scandinavian and European artists like Zara Larsson, Christopher, Joey Moe, Too Many Lefthands, Little Mix, and Kygo! It was so so much fun! There were thousands of people there all dancing and enjoying the music. Definitely a great end to a really fun weekend!

Love,