Exploring the eastern shore

Last weekend we weren't too adventurous.  We were ready to have a lazy Saturday at home.  We did take a quick trip to Åhus, a town nearby on the eastern shore of Sweden, in search of ice cream.  We heard there was a stand that sold big ice cream cones.  While they weren't Chill N Grill proportions, they were very yummy!

We hear that Åhus has nice beaches but since it has been rainy and cool, we haven't checked them out yet.  We did roam the town a little and found a remnant from the old city wall. 

This weekend, we headed out on a longer adventure.  We decided to cater to the boys in the family. We drove 1 1/2 hours north to Karlskrona, the headquarters of the Swedish navy for hundreds of years. 

Cool bridge just outside Karlskrona

We visited the Marinmusuem there which had artifacts and information on the history of the navy and shipbuilding in Sweden.



 They had nice audio tour headsets in various languages (though M was concerned they'd hurt her photo ops).  They had a huge model room with old models of various boats, docks, etc. Everyone thought that was really cool.

They also had an underwater tunnel through which you could see a shipwreck.  The water was pretty murky, but you could make out the old pieces of ship. You could also see lots of fish and jellyfish.

They had some curious art work-- all made of weapons.


 There was a hall of figureheads. It's hard to get the scale in these pictues, but they were huge.

They also had many hands-on exhibits. One let you try to navigate a ship. We did it right once, but then just had to do it again to see what would happen if we did it really wrong.  They had you take two measurements along the simulated journey.  After the first wrong measurement the computer captain said, "The men are wondering what you are doing." After the second, the captain complained that they were hours late to their destination and that we "Sailed like a Dane!" At another spot in the museum, he got to blow up Danish ships with a cannon. They had a play area for kids that was a mock-up of a ship.  It had dress-up clothes (our kids are too old for that) hammocks, ladders to climb, radios to play with, etc. 


Exhibit about the Cold War

Outside they had a number of boats docked.  They also had a submarine sitting out of the water.  G's great disappointment of the day was that we weren't able to go onto any of them. 

Karlskrona is built on an archipelago-- lots of little islands with narrow water passages between--which is what made it a strategic harbor.  We could see fortifications on many of the islands. Unfortunately we didn't have time to take boat rides to the outer fortresses. We did walk around one fortification near the museum and you can see several others in the distance.

We also walked up the hill to town to see two churches in the town square.  Unfortunately, they were only open for a few hours in the morning so we weren't able to see inside.  The town was a fun town, though.  Lots of tall narrow buildings.

A typical street