I am, however, as this trip is winding down, really feeling ready to go home. Traveling is tiring and expensive and 2.5 weeks of traveling + 7.5 months of living in France/traveling/not going home are really catching up to me. I'm loving this trip and really enjoying myself, but it's going to feel nice to get on that transatlantic flight in about six days.
But first I need to finish talking about Stockholm. We spent the morning walking around the old town of Stockholm, known as Gamla Stan. Gamla Stan is one of the islands of the city of Stockholm and it's full of small pedestrian streets and colorful houses.
Posing before walking around the narrow streets of Gamla Stan. The building in the background is the Swedish Congress.
Streets and courtyards of Gamla Stan.
Some kind of elf thing...
And Karen with the elf.
A lot of Gamla Stan is packed with tourists, but we wandered down a lot of small streets and managed to avoid the tourist groups pretty effectively. The streets are nice just to look at, as are many small and old streets in Europe, so we spent a bit of the morning doing that. We wanted to kill time until 1:15 when the changing of the guard ceremony took place at the palace, so we also spent awhile sitting on the water looking at some of the other islands of Stockholm.
Every view in Stockholm is nice.
The changing of the guard ceremony was something else. I've seen a few changing of the guard ceremonies in different countries, but I've never seen one with a full band that lasts thirty minutes. There were a ton of guards that changed shifts, but they also came in with a marching band that played official music during the ceremony. And for about 15 minutes in the middle of the ceremony, we were essentially treated to a mini-concert by the band. It was, by far, the most elaborate changing of the guards ceremony I've ever seen; very cool. It was also packed with tourists, so my pictures aren't great, but cool nonetheless.
Just one of the shots of the guards and the colors.
After the changing of the guards ceremony and lunch, we took a (long) walk along the water and across the different islands to a museum in a big park. The museum is home to an enormous ship, the Vasa, built in 1628. The Swedish king wanted the ship (a warship with two gun decks, one of the first of this kind) to be built so he could take it to Poland and intimidate the Poles. Unfortunately, when they built the ship, they couldn't quite figure out how to get the balance right with adding that extra level, so when the ship was launched it sailed for precisely 20 minutes and then sunk in Stockholm's harbor. The ship sank into the water and down into the mud under the harbor. Apparently the water here is not particularly salty and not that full of oxygen so the normal organisms that feed off shipwrecks don't exist here. So in the 1960s, the ship was discovered and pulled up - in nearly pristine condition. It has been worked on since the 60s, but it is 98% original and now has it's own museum. And it was quite a sight!
The Vasa. It was absolutely enormous. It was also covered in intricate carvings - more than 700 - that were once painted bright colors. It was an extremely elaborate ship, definitely meant to strike fear in the Poles. Too bad it made it about half a kilometer.
I couldn't get the ship all into one photo, but here's a decent shot of much of the ship.
The back of the ship was extremely intricately carved. Pretty much everything you see is the original carvings.
The museum was really cool. There were lots of other artifacts that had been found on the ship, and we took a short tour with a guide who explained the history of the Vasa.
By the time we left the museum it was after five, so we took the rest of the afternoon/evening easy. We sat in a park for a bit and then walked back to the hostel and hung out here for the evening. We're packed and ready to go tomorrow, though we won't be in too much of a rush because our flight isn't until 2pm. Then it's on to London, where Karen and I will be meeting a friend in the airport and where we'll be staying the night. Our flight Tuesday morning to Reykjavik is really early, so we're just staying in the airport. And then it's the last stop of my trip. Crazy!
The park where we sat for a bit this evening.
I wish I'd had more time in Stockholm, though I'm ready to move on because all of this traveling is exhausting. I can't believe I'll be home in less than a week!
No post tomorrow since I'll be in the airport (and won't have anything interesting to say anyway). Tuesday I should be able to post from Iceland!
No comments:
Post a Comment