Duck in the desert

Las Vegas was extremely dry. Outside you are in the desert, and indoors they have air conditioning on full blast all the time so it is even worse. My nose and lips were in a terrible state when we left. I did see a few ducks that somehow had ended up in the middle of the desert. They swam around in one of the big fountain show pools.

Funnily shaped food

In the Sunshine City aquarium they have a cafe. They were closing when I passed by, but I noticed that they had a menu with funnily shaped food, so I asked if they would allow me in for just a minute to buy some stuff. They kindly did.

They had caramel and coconut latte drinks that came with fish drawings, but I don't like coffee so I did not order that. At lunch they also serve curry with the rice shaped like fish or penguins, but it was too late to order food like that.

I ordered nikuman (steamed bread with meat) and anman (steamed bread with sweet beans) shaped like a penguin and an octopus. The one with meat was pretty good, though the white parts were a bit dry. The octopus had too much sweet beans, which makes your mouth go really really dry and is a bit boring to eat. The octopus arms were made from mochi, sweat and very gooey rice, which was a pleasant surprise.

Sunshine city planetarium and aquarium

Towards evening we left the Maid Cafe and split the group. Some people went to an arcade hall to try all kinds of dancing and shooting games or whatnot. The rest of us went to Sunshine City, a building so big it is called a city. It has 60 floors in the higher parts and contain all kinds of things. Hotels and shopping, restaurants and offices, an aquarium, a planetarium, an observation deck, and much more.

We stopped by the planetarium, where we got to see some very beautiful star maps and movie clips shown in a very wide format. We bought the double feature tickets that also allowed us in to the aquarium nextdoor. The aquarium was quite nice, though some of the animals that were outside (on the roof) were in sleep mode since we got there so late.

Out on the roof it was also extremely windy. And a bit cold. I was surprised that the penguins did not fly away (as in thrown away by the strong winds; I am aware that penguins do not fly despite being birds).

A lemur sleeping with some armadillos

Baby animal that kept falling down and trying to climb back up only to fall down again.

Sleepy penguins

Big fish

Pelicans

Sheep at the computer science department

This week there are lots of sheep milling about outside the computer science department.

Dead frog at work

There was a dead frog outside my office.

Skansen

Skansen is a great place to visit for tourists in Stockholm. It is part museum of old Swedish houses; they brought lots of old houses from various time periods and various places to Skansen and reassembled them there. It is also part zoo; there is one zoo of "Swedish wild animals", one zoo of "exotic animals", and there are Swedish farm animals all over the place helping with the realism of the houses (i.e. pigs in an old pig sty). There are also lots of people doing things in the "old way" while wearing clothes from that time period.


So you can go to an old bakery building, watch people wearing clothes from the same period as the building and baking bread in the way it was baked then, using recipes from that time. And you can then buy the bread they baked. You can see traditional weaving, glass working, farm animal feeding, and much more. You can eat traditional Swedish food, and they celebrate all the big Swedish holidays too. There are some stages where there are concerts too. And it is located on a hill, so the view of Stockholm from there is great! Well worth a visit, in my opinion.

I went there with my Japanese friend, and since she too likes animals we spent a lot of time in the zoo parts. And we found some Swedish waffles to eat too.

You can walk with the lemurs.

You are not allowed to touch the lemurs, but they can touch you, like the one climbing on this German tourist.

This girl became very angry with her dad when he tried to be in the picture with her. She wanted to be alone with the lemurs in the photo, haha.

Me, my "I am not Japanese" t-shirt, and a lemur

There were some "nude rats" that looked weird.

There was a snake that you could pet.

I also petted a spider.

Very Swedish looking Swedish house

Before the red color was mass produced, Swedish houses had this grayish color.

An example of the very nice view from Skansen.

A wolverine in the "wild Swedish animals" zoo.

My Japanese friend found it hilarious that this woman had the Chinese (also the Japanese) letter for "woman" as a tattoo.

A Swedish waffle, for once not made by me

There was a very long line to the waffles. My Japanese friend said she always got angry with the lines in Sweden, as does my brother's girlfriend. Swedish people do not get angry when there are lines. And trying to explain that getting angry will not make things go faster makes Japanese girls get even angrier, haha!