Stockholm

We have had a very busy day and a half in Stockholm. We got off the ship early and headed into town. A few minutes later one of us (she will remain nameless) realised that we hadn’t collected our luggage! Oops. That was quickly corrected and we headed off again. We got to our B&B, settled in and were on the way back to the city by midday. We explored Gamla Stan, the old town, and took a ride on a Hop-on Hop-off boat. We didn’t buy the 1 metre long chocolate.

We bought a Stockholm card. It gives free public transport, including the boat and free entry to a lot of attractions. It means that you can pop into a lot of places that you might have thought twice about if you had to pay for it. One of these was the Photography Museum. We thought it might be interesting and it turned out to be holding an Annie Liebovitz exhibition. It was great.

Next day, after a typical Swedish breakfast of yoghurt, fruit, cereal, Swedish crispbread, cold meat and cheese, we adventured out again. This time we went to the Vasa Museum and Skansen. You could easily spend a whole day at both of them. The Vasa was a Man of War that sunk in Stockholm harbour about 30 minutes after being launched in the 1600s. It was raised in 1965 in near perfect condition. It is absolutely fascinating.

Not a great picture, but it gives you an idea.

Skansen is an open air museum consisting of large number of buildings brought from all over Sweden. There is someone in each building to explain what life for the inhabitants would have been like.

There is also a zoo and an aquarium. The aquarium has open cages of lemurs and tamarins that you can walk through. They were even climbing on people.

There were also squirrels everywhere. Claire spent a fair bit of time chasing them to get a good photo! Finally finding one who posed beautifully.