Great Scandinavian Road Trip: Day 17

Today was the first day in Sweden. The ferry arrived later than I had expected and then it took an hour to get out of the port because of the customs checks on all the cars in front of me. The arrival into Stockholm was nice; you sail for a couple hours through a zillion little islands dotted with weekend homes.

The first stop was the Vassa musuem since it was between the ferry terminal and the hotel. It's a museum that contains an almost perfectly preserved 17th Swedish warship that was discovered in the 1950s. I didn't expect the ship to be as well preserved as it was, it looked almost new. I also didn't expect it to be as big as it was, it was one of the largest wooden ships I have ever seen. I also didn't expect it to be as crowded as it was. The museum (a very large building) was packed, and the line to get in was quite long. Everyone it seems wants to see this ship, and I agree, it was definitely the highlight of Stockholm for me. Unfortunately, it was so dark that you couldn't really take pictures.


Next stop was the nearby Skansen open air museum. It contains houses and other buildings that have been relocated from across Sweden. I normally like going to this type of musuem, and have been to several on this trip, but so far I have been disappointed with the ones I've visited. This one was much better. In fact, it was a huge place, spread over a very considerable area and containing dozens of different buildings. Many of the buildings had craftsmen demonstrating different things like baking or glass blowing. Because of the vastness of the musuem, I had to rush through it a bit to leave time for the rest of the things in Stockholm I wanted to see. I'm sure I saw most of the museum, but it would take almost a full day to do this place justice. They also had some animals on display, including a moose, but like at the zoo, the moose was too lazy to stand up.


From there it was to the old center of Stockholm. It reminded me of the Ile St Louis in Paris, a little island with a maze of narrow streets, lined with gift shops and galleries.

At the end of it was the Swedish royal palace. It had all the usual royal palace things like thrones, and crowns, and waiting rooms, and palace guards.


There was one disappointement for the day. I had planned to go to the medieval musuem, which was supposed to be really good. But after spending half an hour walking around trying to figure out how to get around a bunch of construction to the museum, I found a sign saying the museum was closed for renovations. Too bad.

The rest of the pictures are here.