Water Tour of Stockholm

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September 2, 2011

We arrived in Stockholm, Sweden via the Princess Cruise Ship Emerald. While Stockholm is often called the "Venice of the North", it is nothing like Venice. However, most of the downtown is along waterways. That is because Stockholm consists of 14 islands in Lake Malaren, and borders the Baltic Sea. Rather than do a walking tour of the city, we opted instead to see the city by boat.

From our sightseeing boat we saw the Royal Palace built in the 18th century, which today houses a number of musuems, the National Theater, Old Town (the original Stockholm), and numerous other musuems buildings, shops, apartments, as well as, the Grona Lund Amusement Park, established in 1883, a very small park when compared to the size of amusement parks we are used to in the U.S

Our tour took us through a set of locks into Lake Malaren and back to the Baltic. During our tour we learned that there are over 24,000 islands surrounding the city, and over 100 museums. 80% of the Swedes live in apartments. Most of which are only three rooms, and don't come cheap.

Karen and I both were reminded of our fishing vacations in Wisconsin, as we sailed past pine forests bordering the Baltic as we sailed into and out of Stockholm.

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