One of the promises I made to myself was to not eat at any American chain restaurants during our vacation.

Well it turns out that there aren’t many choices once you’ve left Stockholm unless you want a full sit down meal.

We had some trouble getting the rental car which was ultimately due to the fact that American dates are written month/day and European dates are written day/month and somewhere along the line our reservation got entered as 6/7 instead of 7/6. Little things.

So we were a little later leaving Stockholm than we wanted and it was too early for lunch in any case so we headed out. We spent the first hour trying to figure out all the crazy buttons on our Volvo D-40 (automatic turbo diesel baby) and trying to interpret the street signs, road map, construction zones and driving etiquette. Not to mention a quick stop at an Ikea.

We planned on eating at the first city that we had to change highways on assuming there would be lots of services where multiple roads intersect a city. In a word “nope”.

From there on out we kept an active lookout for food and ultimately rejecting a reststop restaurant we pulled into the next town that appeared to have any size to it.

Wouldn’t you know it, but the only fast food was McDonalds. I argued against and was soundly and quickly overruled. They were hungry now.

American chains do tend to reflect the local culture as well as having the normal stuff.

My lovely assistants are indicating that you can order Swedish meatballs at McDonalds.

We ended up ording the WorldCup specials – Brazil burgers and Italian wraps.

On our way out we noticed the somewhat complicated trash can.

A little more complicated that paper, glass & trash.