28. Summer night City
Trip Start
Jun 17, ????
1
33
38
Trip End
Ongoing
Stockholm, Stockholm, Sweden
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
We flew out with Sterling.dk for the first time and although the seating was not exactly spacious, the flight was on time and they were easy to book with. www.sterling.dk
The best bot of Stockholm, for me, is the Old Town, Gamla Stan. It is full of cobbled streets, windy alleys and lovely shops - boutiques and shoe shops, heavy metal outlets and chocolate emporia. There is very little of that tourist tat that can wall-to-wall fill some cities.
We bought an SL card, which was good value and most of all, really convenient as it covered buses, trains, trams and metro. Buying the card was no joke, as we took a ticket and waited 30 minutes while two women arranged to have War & Peace translated into Swedish and gour staff members ponsed about. It was especially annoying as our hotel turned out to be practically next door so we could even checked in and then come back without missing our turn at the desk.
Highlight for Bob was the Vasa Museet http://www.vasamuseet.se/ - a museum dedicated to the warship Vasa which sank on 10th August 1628. On it's maiden voyage. Oops! As I walked in I commented on the unusual shape of the hull. Turns out that it's "innovative" hull dimensions resulting in a lack of ballast and a fatal list. (Ship design: how hard can it be?). The museum is wonderfully engaging, with interesting detail on how the ship was lost and then how it was found and recovered in 1961. There are little reconstructions and a 1/10th scale model painted in the orignal colours. We were there hours!
This helped to tkae Bob's mind off the fact that I had already managed to lose the map. Easily done. Ahem.
Stockholm is a clean place. There's not much grafitti and crime seems low. In fact, I noticed that the rows of bikes stood outside the central station were mostly not even chained to themselves (to stop the wheels moving) let along chained to an immoveable object. We had a fantastic time in Skansen, with old houses from across Stockholm restored or replicated and Swedish wildlife (allegedly) housed in the far end of the park. We couldn't see half or them! We did see a red squirrell scampering up the road outside though and that was very exciting.
We also had a surprisingly good time at the coin museum. Doesn't sound like it's got a lot of potential does it, but we found out all kinds of facts about the origins of there being 240 pence in the old pound, why the GBP sign looks like an "L", where the word Dollar comes from and the expression 'pieces of eight'. http://www.myntkabinettet.se/engl.htm They could have done with a lot more translated into English though - it's a bit more tourist-friendly that Swedish, it really is.
As so often is the case, it turned out that there would be a celebration for our visit - Midsummer's Eve. My guide book said that it would be the first Friday after 21st June, but in fact, they opted for the Friday before. Instead of putting on a celebratory parade though, they closed all the museums. Amateur mistake. It also surprised me that the hotel staff didn't think that this would be worth mentioning to foreign tourists. What do they imagine we have come for?
