Stockholm, Sweden and at sea headed toward Copenhagen--Saturday-Monday, May 31-June 2, 2014

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Stockholm, Sweden--Saturday, May 31, 2014

We had a beautiful cruise among some of the 30,000 islands of the Stockholm archipelago this morning before docking at the pier. Many of the islands were large enough to have towns and villages on them and many had just lovely summer homes studded across them and are accessible only by boat. Many had saunas down on the shoreline.

After arrival we discovered that this port has an actual terminal building with free wifi, so first thing we did is avail ourselves of this “luxury” and sent out some e-mails and posted photos to Facebook. We have just completed the first 2 weeks of this Enrichment Voyage on board the M/V Explorer. In the morning, June 1^st, she will take on a new set of passengers and we will start the 2^nd one half of the cruise.

On the morning of the 1st, we got on our tour bus for a ride through the fascinating historic and modern downtown Stockholm. The city covers 14 islands linked by a variety of bridges. The imposing Town Hall with its statue of St. George slaying the Dragon, is particularly interesting.

Hopping from island to island, our bus was quickly into the suburbs and then onto the island of Lovon where Drottningholm Palace, the Royal residence of the current King and Queen is located. The Palace, built in 1681 on the site of a 1661 castle that burned, is set facing lovely Lake Malar with formal gardens all around. It was quite interesting in part, because it wasn’t particularly ostentatious like the gold embellished palaces in Russia. It has more of a feel that you could live and be comfortable in the place. Around the Palace are a Chinese pavilion and a theatre built in 1766. Mainly, because of these last two features, the Palace is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

After the tour, we ate our box lunches in the garden and then took a regularly scheduled ferry on Lake Malar back to downtown.

By this time, the marathon running through the city was in full swing and we all had fun running across the street dodging the runners in order to get to our bus. Because of the marathon, many streets downtown were now closed to vehicle traffic so our bus had to swing way around traveling on side roads, through a park, and through some other places near the University, that we didn’t mind seeing at all, to get back to the ship.

At Sea heading for Copenhagen, Denmark--Monday, June 2^nd, Happy Birthday Christopher!

Appropriate to the waters we are now sailing through, Valerie’s topic for this day’s lecture was, “The Vikings: Barbarians or Businessmen?” I think this lecture was the best received so far by our fellow passengers.

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