We have left Sweden

Caught the 8:10 boat, got us into Stockholm's harbor at around 11am.  Pictures from the boat ride back to Stockholm are in the slide show below. Remember, to see each picture slower and bigger, just click on any picture and then you can see them one by one.
When the boat was approaching Stocking and since we weren't exactly sure about drop-off points, we got off at the first place it docked which turned out to be wrong, we could have gotten off at its next drop off point.  So, we were farther away from our bus stop which meant a whole lot of fast walking so that we could catch the bus at the time we wanted to catch the bus.  We made it to the bus stop, made it to the metro station and got off in Kista at a good time.  BUT we noticed, as the metro was pulling into the Kista station, dark clouds and that heavy rain was very near and we actually saw a lightning bolt!  Well, by the time we got out of the station, the rain had started.  We had very good luck with weather up until that point.  So, we walked back to the apartment where our luggage was being held for us in a light rain, thunder and lightning and even some very small hail!!!  Nothing like excitement!

We got our luggage from Magdalena's place, said our goodbyes to her and got in a taxi for the trip to the airport.  When our plane took off, we said "so long" to Sweden, where we had been for almost one month.  We will miss Sweden for sure. Our flight from Stockholm to Barcelona was good, although we were very disappointed to find that Norwegian Air has different luggage weight requirements so we were over on my green suitcase by quite a bit! We tried to juggle things around but with their lower weight allowance, it didn't do any good. So, we had to pay. Once in Barcelona, we checked into our hotel which turned out to be in a great location - right by an Al Campo store which usually has a little mall-like thing attached to it. So, we had everything we needed right by the hotel. That night we decided to spend two nights in that hotel, instead of taking off the next day. So, that evening we wrote the rental car company by email stating we wanted to pick up our car one day later than previously agreed.

July 14th
The next morning we were dismayed to see an email from the rental car company saying that since we didn't pick up our car at the agreed upon time that morning, that our account was being charged anyway.  So, we had no choice but to go to the airport and pick up our car since even when we explained about the email we had written last night and everything, they said we were still going to be charged for that day, even if we don't take the car!  Oh well, we drove the car back to the hotel and after getting over it, spent the rest of the day sending inquiries to apartments to rent.

July 15th
Took off fairly early this morning.  We had a nice drive and saw some really beautiful scenery along the way. We were in "looking for a place to live" mode though, and spent quite a bit of time trying to figure out how to do that in each interesting city we visited.  Here are some pictures along the road to a town called Anso, where we thought it would be interesting to live for a little while.  Didn't find any place to live, but we thought the drive there was really nice.

We liked that hole up in the mountain there.

Some homes or apartments in the town of Anso.

Leaving Anso

We kept on driving through some really beautiful country and by the time we got to the town we thought we would stop at for the evening, the countryside had become a lot plainer.  Too bad - it would have been nice to stay in those mountains we passed through.

Anyway, we got to Vitoria Gasteiz and right away saw a sign for a hotel so we headed for it.  Turned out to be a big mistake because we never did find that hotel and not sure where that sign REALLY points or if that hotel is even still there.  So, we ended up driving around in circles and the crazy thing is, there weren't any OTHER hotels in all our circling that we could have chosen from.  NONE!  We thought it was the weirdest thing to not see a single hotel anywhere.  All we saw were apartment complex after apartment complex.  We finally decided to stop at a McDonalds to use their wi-fi.  We found two hotels online and called one of them and programmed the address into the GPS and thought we were finally on our way to settling down for the evening.  Nope.  The GPS failed us this time and could not lead us to the hotel.  We were still driving around in circles.  Fortunately, as we were headed out of the city I had seen a little hotel off on a side street and we thought, well, that'd be better than nothing!  So we made our way back there and actually, it was a cute little place.  It was like staying in a castle - the rooms were stone and it was dark inside and all that.  So, things turned out ok.  Since it was Sunday evening, late, it was hard to find an open place to get something to eat, but we found a place that was just about to close and we got something there real quick and then headed back.