June 12, 2009

As part of the post-trip coverage of the USF Women's Basketball "Viking Voyage" to Scandinavia, assistant coach Abby Conklin provides www.USFDons.com with a blog reflecting on the Dons' time in Stockholm, Sweden.

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We started our journey leaving USF at 4:30am on Sunday, May 24th. We first had a six hour plane flight to Newark, NJ and from there we had an eight hour flight to Stockholm, Sweden. With the nine hour time change - we arrived around 9:00am on Monday, May 25th. As soon as we arrived we loaded a bus and did a three hour city tour of Stockholm. We tried our hardest to remain awake until the Swedes went to sleep but for some of us...this was not possible.

I think Stockholm was my favorite part of the trip....I like Oslo as well BUT Stockholm was much cheaper (relatively speaking) than Oslo. We only think things are expensive in San Francisco. Visiting Scandinavia gave me a deeper appreciation for San Francisco. Even though we think San Francisco is expensive (especially when you moved here from Wyoming) it makes you realize that we have one of the best cities in the world for roughly half the price!

As for the tourist part of our trip, I really enjoyed seeing the Vasa. It was such a large ship and I was amazed at how intact and well preserved something could be after spending 300 years on the floor of the Baltic Sea! If you're ever in Stockholm...go see the Vasa - you will not be disappointed! I was hoping we would be far enough north to see Aurora Borealis but unfortunately...no Northern Lights. However, I was totally enamored by the hours of daylight. Rachel and I were strolling down the street in some random part of Stockholm looking for a restaurant to eat dinner, as we stopped to admire this huge and amazing church, we realized it was 10:15PM - according to the clock tower. It felt like it was about 7:00pm because of the level of daylight. The last night we were in Stockholm, the horizon never got fully dark and the sun started to come back up at 2:30am.

Oh yeah...and for basketball! LOL! I think our team learned a lot in our two games in Sweden. The Swedish team was super physical - they held, grabbed, knocked us down, and ran into us the entire game. I think when you added that physicality with our jetlag, it made for an ugly game. But, it gave our players a great introduction to European basketball and they quickly figured out how rough and aggressive they had to play and this lead to our on-court success the rest of the trip.

-Abby Conklin

-- For complete coverage of the Dons' voyage, visit the Tour Central page.