Uppsala; Friday, 09 October, 2020

An early start from the hotel and over to the airport to checkin and head on through to the departure lounge. As it was such an early flight they were keen to get us away quickly so boarding started promptly, with everyone one with time to spare. Then for some reason we just sat at the gate all sealed up for several minutes past our scheduled departure time.

Eventually they went to push us back, but not certain if they were short staffed, or just not paying attention, but nobody remembered to remove the chocks, so the first couple of attempts to reverse us off of the stand were met with quite a bit of resistance before they worked out what was happening and then we were on our way.

Otherwise an uneventful flight over to Stockholm and, despite the late departure, an early arrival. It was a quick journey through the airport, which of course meant I missed the earlier bus by a couple of minutes and had a 25 minute wait until the next one.

I arrived in Uppsala and headed over to my hotel with the original idea of just leaving my luggage, but the room was already available, so I was able to checkin and get refreshed before heading back out.

From the hotel I headed down towards the river and then over into the historic part of the city with the old mill (now the city museum), cathedral and castle.

I had a long wander around the area, including visiting the cathedral, before hiking up the hill to the castle to have a wander around the grounds and take in the views.

By the time I left the castle it was already starting to get dark, and by the time I was back down in town pretty much all the light of the day had gone. I headed back to the hotel to quickly freshen up and then popped out to find somewhere to get dinner.

A quick look round the restaurants in central Uppsala revealed that despite this being a student city, it wasn’t what I’d call student pricing (that or Swedish students are significantly better off than the rest of their European counterparts), so instead I headed back to the hotel where the pricing for dinner was closer to an acceptable price (though a Beer and a Burger did still cost close to £25)

By the end of dinner the early start was starting to catch up with me, so I headed up to my room and turned in for an early night.