Blogs from Stockholm County, Sweden, Europe - page 3

Pidennetty viikonloppu Tukholmassa, torstaista sunnuntaihin, suorat lennot Pirkkalasta. Ensimmäisen päivän ohjelmassa oli käynti ABBA-museossa. Minähän olin käynyt siellä jo aiemmin, mutta nähtävää riitti toisellakin kerralla. Museon jälkeen kiertelen kaupungilla, kävin katsomassa sattumalta pääkirjastoakin.... read more

This was my last day in Sweden. Last night I took a photo of the view from my hotel window. (That’s the Stockholm City Hall on the right.) I started this morning by walking to City Hall where I intended to take a tour. That didn’t work out because of the large number of other tourists. All the slots for tours for the morning were already booked. Oh well. I enjoyed sitting in the courtyard and sipping my morning coffee. I spent the afternoon at the Nordic Museum which is devoted to five centuries of Swedish lifestyles. It was more interesting than it sounds! If Skansen (yesterday) was like Greenfield Village, then this museum is similar to a small-scale Henry Ford Museum. It displays Swedish house furnishings such as clocks, beds, chairs, toys, etc. But it ... read more

Unfortunately I did not “hit the ground running” this morning. I’m still feeling poorly so I didn’t follow the itinerary I had planned. Instead I saw other sights around town and I was able to get a fair amount of sightseeing accomplished. To start, I followed Rick Steves’s walking tour of Old Stockholm which includes the Royal Palace. I snapped a photo of the palace (on the right), the cathedral (in the back), and a statue of a king of Sweden on his horse in the middle. Later there was a changing of the guard that was fairly impressive and included a marching band. The Nobel Museum is nearby and I toured that. Martin Luther King was the person featured and it was interesting to see the displays about him and his life. Later in the ... read more

Today started with a 4 hours train journey to Stockholm and a 3 night stay at the Hotel Lilla Radmannen. After check-in & lunch we headed out for a brief orientation walk around the medieval city that is arguably Scandinavia's most beautiful city. Gamla Stan, (or Old Town), is one of 14 islands that makes up the city & is its vibrant heart due to its historic architecture, narrow cobblestoned streets & home of the Royal Palace. However being expensive & crowded with tourists we had dinner & drinks in the emerging Sodermalm district. Next day the girls went to the ABBA museum & had a really good time while I visited a number of Stockholm’s underground stations. The subway (Tunnelbana) system of 100 stations is huge for a city of less than 1 mil & ... read more

After thirty-six hours of cruising on the Baltic Sea from Copenhagen, we docked in Stockholm this morning shortly before 9 AM. It has been surprisingly smooth sailing thus far, with sea conditions calm. When we docked, the air temperature was 33 degrees, but it rose to a balmy 60 degrees by mid-day, with clear blue skies and sunshine the order of the day. We had booked an excursion, "Stockholm On Your Own", which provided bus transportation to three separate locations in the city, where participants were free to visit what they wished independently. It seemed like a flexible approach, but as it turned out, there were simply too many sights and too little time devoted to each location. As a result, we came away from today's experience both frustrated and a little disappointed. The first stop ... read more