As we made our way home, we had almost a full day in Copenhagen before catching the 16:30 train back to Sweden. We left the hotel fairly early and stopped to stash our luggage at the train station before setting off mostly unencumbered for Strøget, the big shopping street. The day was gorgeous and sunny, warm but not too warm, so we just meandered along seeing what there was to see. Highlights for the kids included a visit to Scandinavia’s first Disney Store (egad) and a quick browse for Lydia in the Louis Vuitton store. My favorite part was absolutely the mixed vegetarian platter I had for lunch at Strøg Shawarma. That was probably the best meal out I’ve had since moving to Europe.

I’d like to report that the train ride home was uneventful, and in large part it was, but after a three-hour nap Brynja awoke with an unenviable case of motion sickness and spent the last hour of the trip throwing up (and Olof spent the last hour of the trip playing sick nurse and clean-up man). As soon as we got off the train and out in the open air, though, she recovered well and didn’t have any more problems for the remainder of the evening.

It was nearly ten o’clock when we arrived in Stockholm, and we headed directly to our hostel and settled in for our last sleep away from home. Our flight home the next day wasn’t until 18:30 so we split up, Lydia and Yrsa tagging along with me for a Pizza Hut lunch with some Stockholm friends I don’t see nearly often enough, and the three middle kids going with Olof to Gamla Stan, where I gather they spent the bulk of their time at the Sci-Fi bookstore. We all met up again in the mid-afternoon and hopped a train out to the airport, where we ate dinner and spent more time than I like to remember dealing with another episode of distress on the part of Brynja’s gastro-intestinal system.

Finally, finally we boarded our plane and winged our way northward. Olof’s parents met us out at the airport with our car, and we wasted no time getting ourselves home and collapsing on our very own couches. As they say in Swedish, borta bra, men hemma bäst