This weekend we saw it for the first time! A real Hanse 388!
But first some words about how we actually got here, and the quite amazing hotel we’re staying at.
I was talking on the phone with Lennart from Bohus Yachts (the Swedish Hanse dealer) a couple of days ago when he suddenly suggested we should take a trip to Stockholm as one 388 happened to be docked in Sandhamn, just nearby. It sounded like a nice weekend adventure so why not!
It’s EuroPride 2018 here in Stockholm this weekend and when I looked for a hotel a few days ago, I managed to get the last room in a hotel neither of us had heard of before.
But it is super cool! Hotel At Six, just a few steps away from centrally located Sergels Torg, in the newly rebuilt Gallerian.
Our room is on the top floor (they go all the way to fifteen!) and when we opened the door to the room for the first time I think I said “what the f…“, quite spontaneously, in a good way :). Well, you have to see it for yourself!
Here they are on TripAdvisor and if you go there for the first time the entrance can be easily missed, but X marks the spot so just look for the big X above the entrance to the hotel.
Back to sailing …
Yesterday we took the trip to Sandhamn to see the boat.
The combined bus and ferry ride from Stockholm was about 1,5 hours (Charlotte felt a bit sick so she tried to sleep for most of the time), after which we arrived in lovely Sandhamn. To a rain shower, unluckily, but not without an umbrella, since we had been smart enough to grab one from the hotel (usually we are not).
It was a bit strange to actually see the boat. After having browsed through hundreds of pictures and videos, and reading countless articles, blogs etc about the Hanse yachts, actually seeing one in real life felt a bit weird.
But it looked nice. Even in the rain.
And the owner was nice and welcoming. (And they had a wonderfully cute ship’s dog!)
We walked around inside and outside, opened doors and cabinets, asked whatever questions came to mind (surprisingly few) and just tried to give some space to that intuitive feeling that either materialises or doesn’t: is this the boat for us?
“So what did you think”, I asked Charlotte, perfectly aware of the fact that she actually might have hated it.
“Well”, she said, “it was a bit smaller than I had imagined from the pictures”. “Especially the toilet”, she continued.
“But what did you think, like overall, could that be our boat?”
“Yes”, she replied, and I think I did see a little smile on her face.