Not an ideal start!

The day started at Claire's place in crystal palace far too early (6ish) after a night of far too much prosecco and a delightfully massive quantity of pizza at the Foodism National Pizza Day Pre-Party which was a load of fun and great catching up with Claire bear! And so feeling less than 100% we headed off to Stansted via Liverpool street and of course Liverpool street station Macdonalds for a much needed sausage and egg mcmuffin fix.

The first of a few things that went wrong was when Claire realised on the Stansted express that she had checked her bag size against the wrong measurement and spent a while worrying about getting it on the plane without paying exorbitant surcharges but in the event it was not a big deal at all and we were wheels up and off to Sweden!

As we started descending into Sweden we were both shocked to see quite how snow covered in snow it was! It never dawned on us that it would still be like that in February and with the daily temperatures being in positive figures but it really looked spectacular!

80 minute bus ride into Stockholm later and we were ready to get into our weekend away!

We walked around the corner, saw the Radisson blu and headed inside! We were greated by a spectacular lobby...with a giant queue...time for a beer!

We headed up to the 9th floor skybar and relaxed with some predictably expensive drinks and took in the beautiful sunset views while the queues died down.

After a couple of rounds I decided I would head down and check out the queues and nip out for a smoke, I asked if Claire could bring my bags down (one backpack and one bag for my CPAP)...it was that exact moment that I felt my heart sink because in an instant I knew that I had left my cpap on the bus from the airport!!!

Drinks down, jackets on, out the door to the bus station double quick!

We found the ticket desk quickly and asked the guy if it had been handed in...no, nothing handed in, did we remember the driver? Nope, did we know what type of bus it was....Volvo? After a torturous 10 minute wait he came to find us on the benches opposite the counter and said "we spoke to the driver and he's found a bag"....a few minutes later the bus pulled into the station and to my absolute delight he had it!!

We headed back to the hotel to check in and found the queue even longer than we had left it!!!

After 20 minutes we finally made it to the front of the queue after finding out they were having "system issues", we got to a check in desk and were promptly informed...We were in the WRONG Radisson blu! But the other one was 2 minutes walk away.

We got here, checked in and made the fatal mistake of testing how comfortable our beds were... We were very very close to calling off the thought of leaving at all and even went so far as to peruse the room service menu.

Thankfully we found a well hidden mini bar that had beer and Red Bull and we were recharged and ready for a wander!

Stockholm is absolutely beautiful and we went for a nice long walk and stopped for some tasty dinner including a perfectly cooked steak!Read more