Spoiler but not: I end up crying, lol.
I kept seeing ads for a Pippi circus while we were in Stockholm!! The original Swedish Pippi movie was Kelly Family Favorite back in the 80s. My brother Ryan and I used to watch it A LOT and make fun of it, but also I was low-key terrified by it??
Yo, Grona Lund is so freaking beautiful. Vaguely reminiscent of Indiana Beach in that it sits along water, but um, obviously Stockholm trumps anything in Indiana (sorry, Indiana peoples) so I’m going to have to give Grona Lund the win here. The beautiful thing about nearly every park we visited on this trip is that they have so much aesthetic appeal and the rides are almost secondary to the experience of just BEING THERE. I can see Grona Lund being a place where people would go just to walk around, eat, enjoy being next to the water, bickering with people on Reddit over the Lost finale.
I don’t know, just seems like a peaceful locale to really settle in for some comment section belligerence.
They have THREE DIFFERENT TYPES OF DROP TOWERS. Calm down, Grona Lund.
Being tormented by MOMMY as usual. I think he was pissed because some of the cool guys from our group were sitting nearby, drinking beers and he didn’t want to be seen being mommy’s monkey.
Me looking old AF because news flash, this was not a chill, relaxing vacation lol.
We would be on that ferry in approx. 24 hours from when this picture was taken!
Yeah like imagine going here on a date, you know? Shit, son, how romantic!
If I had brought the good camera into the park with us, I would have made Chooch stand here for senior portraits. What a missed opportunity. Notable about this bridge though is that it was the FIRST TIME of the trip we had a convo with Alex from Coaster Spot! Well, technically Chooch had previously conversed with him AND ridden with him too probably, OK cool guy.
But anyway, he was filming stuff and then stopped to say something to us, I can’t remember what, but we started chatting and then I blurted out ARE YOU COASTER SPOT and he very reluctantly admitted that yes, yes he is. I’m a subscriber of his YouTube channel but he is notoriously ALWAYS behind the camera and usually only films his wife. I had THOUGHT that they were going to be on this trip but then when 2 days passed and I never saw his wife, I figured they didn’t come. But then SOMEONE on the bus said he was on the trip and I was like, “WHAT.” One day, Henry was standing near him and recognized his voice and said to me later, “Hey I think that’s Coaster Spot” and I was like, “no way, his wife isn’t here…” but yeah, it really was him! Anyway, he very bitterly said, “[XXXXX] outed me” and I said, “Yup, that’s exactly how I heard you were here.”
Apparently, that same person is an absolute menace to coaster personalities on the internet and a lot of them had to block him. But it was a bonding moment, lol. And then he said, “You should have talked to me sooner!” and I wanted to be like, “Well, you were always with the girl who hates me, so.”
He hasn’t posted a single video yet from this trip but I’m really looking forward to it because he does a lot of walk-thrus whereas the other guys heavily edit theirs. I want to be able to relive more of the experience by watching someone’s walk-thru!!
Stockholm carouselfie!! This carousel was a tiny baby thing.
We had fun in kiddie land!
I think LARRY took this! We were riding with Dawn, Robert, Arnold and Eamon!
Plus a random dad and kid who got stuck riding this with a bunch of Coaster Crew dumbos lol. We kept hand-slapping every time we went around a bend since the train would curve, but I could never reach anyone!!
Chooch and I caused a scene when we rode this and were the only ones who couldn’t get their elephant to fly. People were laughing at us and I really wanted to bury my head in the sand, or in Dumbo’s butt.
Random collection of Beatles artifacts.
Two shots of my LICORICE ICE CREAM with LICORICE TOPPING.
Wow, Henry is so cool.
At one point, Chooch and I were in line for something and looked down (a lot of the rides have elevated stations) and saw Marshall sitting on a bench, smoking. “Did he even ride anything on this trip?” Chooch mused out loud. “All I ever see him doing is sitting down and smoking. ‘Hmm, I wonder what it would be like to smoke cigarettes in Sweden. *signs up for trip*'”
This trip turned Chooch into a stand-up comic. I mean, he’s always made me laugh, but this was next level guffawing.
GUFFAWHAWHAW.
We made Henry go on the fairy dark ride since he skipped out the first time and it was his favorite ride at Grona Lund in case you needed it to support the Henry’s Nude Fairy Fetish section of your “Henry: Inside the Mind of a Man & His Beard” dissertation.
Man, did this day go by quick. (You would never know based on how long it took me to recap it, Jesus Christ, get it together, Erin.) But I will always remember how it ended: It was getting close to the end of the night so we decided to get a final ride on Monster. It was a walk-on for the back row and Sam ran over and asked if he could ride with us. Of course we said yes! That kid is soooo full-throttle adrenaline, I swear to god. It’s contagious. So we were all pumped up by the time we returned to the station and the ride attendants said we could stay on if no one was waiting for our row. NO ONE WAS! So me, Chooch, and Sam stayed on but Cry Baby Henry got off. That was fine though because Dewey came and sat with me! It was my first time talking to him the whole trip so we bonded as best as we could in the short amount of time we had left.
“I really think I’m going to cry!” I yelled across my restraints. And he said, “I know, I can’t believe it’s our last night!”
And you guys. You guys. You guys you guys you guys. Almost the whole train was Coaster Crew, last ride of the night, and we were shrieking, “Coaster Crew! Coaster Crew!”
It was so fucking wholesome. So pure. And Henry missed it!
After that, we all gathered around near the front of the park, waiting to get back on the bus. It was a sad drive back to the Sheraton. A bunch of us talked outside while Tim handed out our room keys and then we had to go to the luggage storage room to grab our shit because we had dropped everything off prior to going to Grona Lund since we weren’t going to have the same bus bringing us back. Or something. I can’t remember. This is a boring detail anyway.
I made Chooch take pictures of Pam and me. I MISS HER MOST OF ALL. I’m crying right now, LOL. Ugh.
Anyway, after this, I gave Tim the special Liseberg print I got him with the thank you note I scribbled on the back. He was like, “Should I read this now?” and I screamed “NO!!” but the gesture alone made him tear up and then I teared up and then we were both tearing up and hugging and he called us a sweet family which made me laugh but it came out as a blubber on account of all the tearing up.
Jesus Christ, I can’t handle it. There wasn’t much more that I wanted to say here but I will include it in the beginning of the next post which was A PARK-FREE day, can you even believe it?? And I will leave you with this comprehensive video of the second half of this day. I will warn you – the beginning of this is a LOT of “bus window scenery” content. SORRY but I thought everything was so beautiful and I didn’t want to forget it OK?? Sue me.