Day 14 - The Royal Wedding

Saturday the 19th of June 2010 is “the day”. Today is the day when Crown princess Victoria of Sweden is getting married to her prince and the whole country is in wedding mode. Royalties and dignitaries from around the world are gathered and last but not least the three of us all the way from Australia to watch and enjoy the whole thing. The King of Sweden Karl Gustaf XVI got married in 1976 to Sylvia Sommerlath, now Queen Silvia, and we were all here in three different places enjoying that wedding as well.

On the morning of the wedding we had a little fright as Salme who woke up with chest pains and the decision was made to take the safe option and a visit to the local hospital was made where she was quickly admitted for observation for 24 hours. This somewhat changed our plans for the day but after the doctors assured us that Salme was in good hands and after her insisting for us to go and watch the Royal wedding we left somewhat deflated towards home for a quick shower and change.

Lisa, Lennart, Peter and Yvonne jumped on the subway which was free rides for everyone for the whole weekend of the wedding and let me tell you we were not alone for the trip into central Stockholm.

Total rush hours with standing room only, people everywhere and moving either forward or backwards was not an easy task, but with stamina determination we made it to our very privileged position for the afternoon with Lisa and Yvonne quickly decided they needed a Swedish flag and managed to buy the most expensive one in town I’m sure.

It was super special though as it had a gold colour tip making it one of the better looking flags around.

Once we were positioned on our balcony and Peters camera gear was set up we then realised we had forgotten the most important item at home! We had remembered to bring our water bottles but managed to forget the chilled bottle of Champagne and glasses.

As there were many a bottles being popped around us we made do with the aromas of everyone else’s bubbly wine and cheered on with our water instead eagerly waiting for the wedding to begin.

Our view was spectacular and not only did we see the Royal Castle but also the huge TV monitor pretty well so the whole ceremony could be watched in style.

The amount of people was astonishing in the hundreds of thousands around everywhere you looked, waving flags with an atmosphere of celebration.

It was an afternoon to be remembered and after an equally crowded trip back home we finished the evening with our forgotten Champagne and some very tasty Thai dinner prepared by the local Thai take away restaurant.