Day 2. Stockholm

I arrived at Stockholm airport after many hours of travel tired but looking forward to seeing Paul and not having to carry baggage alone.

Dubai had been for once unremarkable apart from the journey from my arrival gate from Sydney to my departure gate for Stockholm.  It took more than 40 minutes, 4 sets of escalators, 2 lifts and one train to get there.   Being the seasoned solo traveller that I am, I followed everyone else, got a bit lost a couple of times and spent a lot of time trying to find toilets.  I had bought some local currency at home,  all of 20 dirhams which I thought would get me a coffee and snack perhaps. Turns out it was equivalent to about $5 maybe. Should have thought that through better as all I got was a coffee for 17 dirhams.  The nice girl at Starbucks laughed at me when I asked if there was anything I could buy for 3 dirhams.

We arrived at the hotel in Stockholm where Paul had spent the last 2 days. On his arrival he had been  surprised to find that the room I had booked was tiny with bunk beds and not enough room for even one person and luggage.  No window, no ventilation, no space,   no way!   Paul realised this was not going to work and remaining calm, cool and collected, rang me and then left the building ($&@$&?!) to find somewhere else.  I rang the hotel and asked if there was a better room available and there was so all sorted. Crisis averted.   Apparently I had mistakenly booked backpacker type accommodation.

Itty bitty thing.

Not so itty bitty is the fact that I left my 28 degrees MasterCard at home.  A panic when I could not find it in my bag but I realised quickly that after spending  hours trying to register it for online use as there were problems with the site, I had done it the morning of my departure.  Ben found the card on the bench at home and made some stupid comment about all the time I had spent etcetera. Smart arse.

Good thing:  it had not been stolen.

Bad thing: I have no credit card. ( thank goodness I had the dirhams at Dubai)

I do have cash which I can exchange for the local currency and I have a debit card so not so major.

However I am clearly now in front in the stupid travel errors competition. 

Paul believes he could still beat me as he feels capable of doing something really stupid but would have to be very very stupid.  We will see.