Sweden Day 5

Wednesday, which by the way is my birthday, started out pretty well. I got up around 7 and took my time getting ready until I had breakfast as per Monday and Tuesday at about 8am. I took my time eating it but the room was kind of crowded so I opted to clear out before I really needed to. I headed straight for the Stockholm City Hall and got there a little before 9am by walking slower than my normal. They had room on the 10am tour so I took that spot and had an hour to kill before it started. I mainly walked around outside the building and took a lot of pictures. It was sunny out and there was little to no breeze which made the just barely above freezing temperature pretty easy to deal with, at least for me. The City Hall was built between 1911 and 1923 but was intended to look like a 300 year old castle. The architect, I could neither spell nor pronounce his name, seemed to be pretty good at what he did and also had a lot of latitude to do what he desired. The place was really interesting to visit. The guided tour was about an hour long and was covered by my Stockholm Card so no money spent there. The guide’s name was Lori and she did a good job if at times she struggled with English. Most of the time it was specific words though. In any event the tour was informative. Most of the people on it aside from me were Chinese it appeared which confused me because there was a Chinese tour a half an hour later. I suppose their tour didn’t give them enough time.

All said and done I was out of the City Hall by 11 and walked straight over to the Gamla Stan (by the way it should be pronounced “Gawm-Law Stawn”) where I decided I would have an Italian lunch before I tried to visit the Royal Palace museums. There was a place right as I got on the island called Rodolfini’s and I had a Lasagna Verde, which was a basic meat lasagna made with spinach noodles. The very Swedish thing in this place was the opener salad served family style of shredded cabbage with a creamy dressing, not anything I’ve ever heard of in an Italian restaurant. In any event I added a glass of red wine which was a generic table wine that went well with the food and then eventually when I was done a quick espresso to finish things off. The food was good and the portion was reasonably sized and the meal very filling. I at some point should mention the curious community bread basket thing I’ve noticed in Sweden. Almost all of the restaurants I’ve been to offer bread to the patrons out of a big basket. Some of the breads may have plastic over them but a lot don’t. There are no tongs or anything and guests just reach right in and take what they want. Not sure where this comes from but I do find it interesting.

While I am on curious Swedish things I should also mention at some point the fact that everyone wears black it appears. I wore my khaki Dockers on Tuesday when I went to Orebro and it sparked me noticing that I only saw about 5 people with grey pants and maybe 2 other people wearing khaki. Since then I’ve kept track and it’s very thin. Of course people wear blue jeans but otherwise it’s black or very dark grey. I assume it is a winter thing but it is curious.

From the Italian restaurant I headed up to the Royal Palace for 12 when all the museums opened. However as I got there I found a bunch of people lining up in the main square. I found a board that posted today as changing of the guard parade at 12:15. They had a parade for my birthday. I was touched… In any event I watched the whole thing and instead of taking pictures took a lot of video of it. Especially with the drum and bugle corps it was very fun. I figure there is a bit more precision from the top notch American parade units but all the same they got helmets with spikes on the top and we don’t have that. The parade took about a half an hour and I managed a reasonable location for filming. The Chinese people next to me only pushed in the way once or twice.

After the parade I went into the ticket office but before actually stuffing myself in line I found that Stockholm card holders could just bring the card and didn’t need to get the tickets. So first I visited the Tre Kronor Museet, which is the Museum of the Three Crowns, which are representative of the Swedish Monarchy. It was a basic history of the castles that had inhabited the Stockholm area including the predecessors to the Royal Palace as it stands. The original castle burned down and was completely destroyed except for one tower in the 1700s. The royal palace is very much a large boxy structure that isn’t quite as picturesque as a medieval castle but it was still an interesting visit. From there I spun around and visited the Treasury Museum where they had collection of the royal jewels on display. Not quite as extensive as the Tower of London it still had some very nice pieces in it. Finally, for the Royal Palace I visited the Royal Apartments. The palace is not actually used as a residence by the royal family, they instead live in Drottningham Slott, which is some distance away but whenever there are royal function in Stockholm the family and their guests stay here. This includes events like the Nobel Banquet, which of course happens here. The guest apartments were perhaps a little sparser than I may have expected but they were certainly beyond the means of anyone I know could afford. The beds were small though, which made my hotel bed seem ok in perspective. The actually apartments of the royal family were the lush display of opulence you would expect however, with lots of ornate carving and gold leaf and expensive looking fabrics and the like. Of course there were no pictures in the palace so none of that is captured by my camera. I have yet to visit Buckingham Palace but I have visited Windsor Castle and I would say it was on a par with Windsor. I assume Buckingham blows it away. The ceilings were very high though.

I finished up at the palace area around 2pm and decided I would make a dash for the Vasamuseet that I had missed the other day. The walk was reasonable and I made it in almost exactly a half an hour. I thought the museum closed at 4 but instead it closed at 8 which was surprising. It did mean I could have taken my time getting there but I was cool with the brisk pace anyway. The Vasamuseet is dedicated to a royal commissioned warship that in 1628, on its maiden voyage, was tossed over by a couple squalls of wind and the capsized killing probably 30 passenger and crew or so and causing a gigantic political stir where it was discovered that because of the fact that the Swedes at that point had never built a ship with 2 gun decks the ship was designed with too narrow a bottom and there was insufficient room to hold enough ballast rocks to keep the ship stable. If they added more ballast then the ship would have been in to the gun portals and that wouldn’t work. The ship’s designer died about a year into its construction and the main forces behind the hurried nature with which it was built were both royal and military so no one was ever convicted of causing the disaster. It is most likely the inexperience that was the real issue. In any event, in 1953 an archeologist realizing that the waters of the lake may actually protect the ship from being destroyed much in the same way as those that were found in Roskilde Fjord (though they were much older) were preserved by the fact the water was not salt water and also very silty. He was correct and a couple years later he actually discovered its location. It was sitting on center keel and was largely preserved. They took a couple years to get it up but it was raised in one piece in 1961 and since has been kept preserved. The cannons had already been salvaged only a couple years after the ship sank but a lot of the rest of the artifacts and relics from it were still down there and a lot of that has been brought up as well. The ship is very big and I was surprised at its size when I entered the main hall. I don’t think the pictures I took will give the proper perspective but the ship held approximately 130 people as a normal crew and they believe there may have been as many as 200 people on board when the ship sank. I definitely would advise a visit to the Vasa if you are ever in Stockholm. This was also covered by the Stockholm card.

I left there about 4pm and headed at a more leisurely pace towards the Gamla Stan again and did a tiny bit of the souvenir shopping I had to do until about 5 or so when I decided I should look for food. I exited the island right on Drottninggatan again and not too far up found Drottninggatan 6 Dining & Bar. I was sucked in by the menu item of grilled Black Angus steak served with baked potatoes and bacon wrapped asparagus spears. When I got in and looked at the menu closer I was torn with what to get but decided to get what I was sucked in by and I enjoyed it a lot. It was by no means the best steak I’ve ever had (Kobe) but it was definitely a lot better than the steak from Jensen’s and cooked properly. I had a Swedish beer that was only ok at best to accompany it and then followed the meal with a selection of Swedish made ice creams with chocolate sauce. I probably should have had cake for my birthday but I like ice cream better. It was vanilla, chocolate an strawberry and was good. I also had a matching coffee that was passable but was obviously made from an espresso, cappuccino machine per the way the English do it. Not my favorite but it was not too chalky.

From there I headed back to the hotel to finish up the day at about 7pm or so.

The pictures from day 5 can be seen here, but there were some wireless signal strength issues while I was posting so a bunch of them are out of position at the end of the list and editing them on this laptop is too much of a pain so I won't be doing anything to fix them until I get home.