I would guess that Stockholm would be the one place most tourists to Sweden have visited, but as temporary Swedish residents, we hadn't made it there yet. We'd been to 14 countries and 18+ capitals/major cities but not to the capital of Sweden. Stockholm is a 6-hour drive north and most of the year, the idea of going farther north on a trip has not appealed to us. With our Swedish experience rapidly coming to a close, it was now or never.
It was a stunningly warm and beautiful day in Kristianstad. We kind of hated to leave it for unknown weather in Stockholm. But the weather stayed nice and gave us a pleasant pitstop at Brahehus. A castle ruin from the 1600s on the shores of Lake Vättern, right next to the E4 motorway.
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| Relatively small ruin--more manor house than palace but with a great location. |
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| Looking out at Lake Vättern, second largest lake in Sweden |
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| Nice view of the village and farms below on the lake shore |
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| This area is hillier and more forested than where we live in Skåne |
Because Stockholm hotels are crazily expensive (worst I've encountered yet), we stayed at a budget hotel in a southern suburb called Kungens Kurva--an area with lots of big shopping malls, including the world's largest IKEA store.:-) The hotel itself looked like an office building on the outside but everyone was relieved that the inside looked normal enough. We checked in and then took a walk to the mall across the street, Heron's Landing. Since it was 9 pm, none of the stores were open but we found the coolest fountain ever and since there weren't many people around we got to play with it. You could use the big colorful buttons to change the spray patterns, water height and colors. Great fun!
The next morning we headed off for sightseeing. We'd purchased 24 hour Stockholm Cards for the family-- they give you unlimited use of mass transit and entry to pretty much all the museums and attractions. I figured out that if you used the mass transit and went to 2-3 museums, they would be worth the cost. They worked great for the bus, subway and tram that we used to travel to the center of Stockholm and then out to Djurgården. Stockholm is a bunch of little islands connected by bridges and ferries. Djurgården was once a royal hunting park. Now it's home to museums and an amusement park. As you'll see in the picture, it was too much to ask for to get another sunny, warm day. Instead it was chilly and cloudy but it never rained on us so we were happy about that.
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The Nordiska Museum-- next door the Vasa. We didn't go inside
this one but the building was really cool looking. |
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Looking down on the Vasa Museum. I love how the ship's masts
extend up out of the roof. |
Our first stop was the Vasa Museum. The Vasa was a Swedish warship built in the 1620s. It's one of those odd famous mistakes. If it had been designed well, it would have gone off to battle Poland and no one would remember it. But since a gust of wind managed to capsize it--on its maiden voyage-- still in the harbor. Quite embarrassing. It sat under water for 333 years after inital salvaging operations failed to recover it. It was found again and raised in the 1950s and they spent years painstakingly preserving and restoring it. The unique composition of the Baltic allowed most of the wood to survive, but a lot of the iron bolts had rusted away. So a lot of pieces had to be gathered and returned to their places. They say the end result now in the museum is 98% original which is remarkable.
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The large number of guns helped make the ship too top-heavy.
Check out the decorative lion head on every gun port. |
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| Very intricately decorated with statues glorifying the power of the Swedish king |
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The museum arrangement allows you to see the ship from many different heights--
they don't let you onto the ship itself. The main masts inside the museum are only 1/3
of the total mast heights. |
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| One of the row boats from the ship |
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Another example of the amazing decorations on the ship. Originally
it was all painted bright colors as well. |
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I had not realized there was a variety of styles of cannonballs they
could shoot-- depending on if they were aiming for deck, masts, etc. |
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| One of many anchors. They were huge! |
It was hard to get good pictures of the Vasa because they keep the museum very dim-- I assume for preservation purposes. They also keep it quite cold. We were glad we visited the Vasa early in the day (got there just after it opened at 10) because it kept getting more and more crowded and when we left the ticket line was really long. (Note: that is the only thing we didn't like about the Stockholm card. None of the attractions we visited had a separate entry line for card holders. You still had to stand in line with everyone buying tickets. In both Paris and Rome, the cards got you out of the lines.)
After Vasa, we hopped back on the tram and headed farther out on Djurgården to Skansen. Skansen is an open-air museum with the goal of preserving Swedish culture. They had historical buildings moved from throughout Sweden, demonstrations of traditional arts and crafts and a zoo with native Nordic animals. We watched the glass blower until we got to hot and then walked through the animal exhibits. The seals and the lynx were the favorites.
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| The lynx had eaten a large bird for lunch-- carcass and feathers were evidence |
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| An interesting bell tower |
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Baby carriages everywhere-- and Swedish baby carriages are
usually very deluxe. No cheap umbrella strollers for them. |
Skansen was a lot like a pioneer village in the U.S. The kids said, "This is where you'd go on field trips to regularly if you lived here." It's up on a hill which is fun because it gives you a nice view out over Stockholm.
We took the tram back to the center of Stockholm and walked from there to Gamla Stan (Old City). On the way, we stopped at the Stockholm Medieval Museum. Its a small museum located under the bridge between the town center and Gamla Stan. We didn't get many good pictures here, either. Once again very dim lighting. But they had some fun exhibits on medieval life. They also have the only remaining portion of the old city wall and the remains of a tunnel to the palace.
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| Old Stockholm city wall |
Across the bridge was the Kungliga Slott-- the official residence of the Swedish royal family. My family had no interest in the fancy currently used rooms. We did walk through the Three Crown museum in the basement. It showed the history and artifacts from the previous castles on the site. No picture-taking allowed.
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| The Royal Palace |
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| Courtyard of the Royal Palace |
Next door to the palace is the cathedral, Stockholm Storkyrkan (Great Church). It was built in the 1200s and has been the site of many coronations and royal weddings and funerals.
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| Stockholm Storkyrka |
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| Prettier on the inside then the outside |
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| I really liked the painting on the ceilings of the side nave |
Not surprisingly, from its name, Gamla Stan is the medieval section of town. It is a cool area with lots of REALLY narrow streets--and now lots of shops aimed at tourists. I could have wondered around looking and taking pictures for a long time, but lucky for you my family was tired.
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| A narrow street in Gamla Stan |
The next morning we drove by the Stockholm Temple in Västerhaninge before we headed for home. We are much closer to Copenhagen (and in the Copenhagen temple district) so this was the first time any of us had seen Stockholm.
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Thought it was cool that it got street signs. If you look just above
the trees right above the arrow on the sign you can spot the Angel
Moroni's trumpet poking out. |
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I thought the Stockholm Temple was much prettier in person than
I'd expected from the pictures I'd seen. It has a very pretty setting. |
Then we headed for home, with one more stop along the way-- this time in Linköping for the Flygvapenmuseum. Apparently Linköping is the home of SAAB and the center of Swedish military aviation. They had some interesting planes and also some fun exhibits on life during the cold war. And we learned about some Swedish planes shot down by the Russians during that time period. The museum also had a fun section of hands-on activities-- flight simulators, airplane models in wind tunnels, etc.
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Reenactment of the first passengers on an air trip--a rooster, duck
and sheep were sent up in a balloon in France. |
One weird thing on the drive home. All along the E4 we saw groups of people sitting out in the rain watching the northbound lanes of the motorway. They were on the overpasses, along the frontage road, etc. We kept expecting to see something exciting to make them sit out in the rain. We did see a few Italian sports cars and a number of factory cars with race type paint schemes, but nothing that would have kept me out in the rain.
