A Royal Time!

Today was a rather interesting sort of day. As a Kiwi, I fall under the Queen of England royalty stuffs and in my 33 years of being a Kiwi I have never had the chance to see a single royal up close and personal.. and as it turns out, I only had to be a Swede for a little over a year before I got the chance to see the Swedish King and Queen up close.. but not so personal, I wasn't one of the lucky ones who got to talk to or even shake the hand of the royals, nor would I really care to do that.. do you know how many germs are passed just by shaking hands?! Gross man!

We headed into town before the royals arrived and grabbed some goodies from the bakery, that were done special for the occasion.. [click for instagram photo] The chocolate coated one was by far the winner here.

We let our goodies settle in our tum tum before we headed back to town to grab a spot in the crowd and wait for the royals to come out and wave.. and do general normal person stuff but it is far more exciting coz they be the royals! The mood was pretty cheery indeed.. there was a band, there was singing that wasn't too shabby at all.. and there was dancing on tables! [click for instagram photo] There were people walking around munching on some free coffee & baked goods, I think one thing might have even been a cinnamon roll, which I think is something you have to eat if you are Swedish. I have grown to enjoy them, even tho I am not a huge cinnamon fan. I am now part Swedish after all, so I gotta go with my herd.. however I refuse to actually like Kalles Kaviar. Nope. Can't do it. [click for video]

The minutes dragged on and on.. don't you just love it how when you are waiting for something to happen, it takes for-damn-ever! Eventually they arrived.. I think on time to be honest.

Then a little song was sung for them..

Once that was over, it was speech time, first up was some dude from the municipality (we think) and then the King's speech came! The King addressed the masses! [click for instagram photo]

 

Sadly there were no fart jokes, I dunno, I just think potty humour is always required. Emma would not agree! It was a pretty special moment and you could tell that people were happy and excited, heck even I was a little excited. There was a great little buzz in our little town and it was lovely. There were however, lots of little flags waving about and most of the time it just hindered the view.. like so..

Behind that flag in the middle is where the King is standing giving his speech.

Once the King had rocked the stage, it was time for a little more song and for Em and I to make our way through the masses of happy faces of all ages.. old people were bopping along as they walked, it was pretty awesome. Of course no Swedish event could be complete without the addition of some ABBA, with a few words changed around so that it was fit for a dancing king.. altho, I didn't see him break into dance once! What's that about, right?! We moved along and eventually got out of the crowd and into a different crowd, where we saw this beautiful slobbering puppy [click for instagram photo] and took our spot and waited for the next glimpse of the royals.. mainly this time we were looking out for the Queen, and we got her! [click for instagram photo] [click for twitter photo]

When it was all done, we waved as they loaded themselves into their bus, yes that is right people, the royals in Sweden travel via bus, coach.. but bus all the same! Awesome right? Off they went and as they did the crowd slowly dispersed around us and we made our way home all chuffed that we had got to see some royals. Definitely better than seeing the cast of Jersey Shore in Florence! Definitely a nice way to spend a Friday.