Day 15 : Stockholm

Beautiful city is all I can say.  The buildings and the water are just so well laid out.  Both during the day and evening it was amazing.  One of my favorites at this point.

Started the day off to see the famous Vasa Museum.  Didn't know anything about it but it was the top place to visit.  One the way we ran into some Santa nomes playing the trees.

There was also a giant bird feeder on the river.  There were two different types of swans and who knows how many variety of ducks.

Found out the museum is all about a ship called the Vasa.  One of four commissioned by a long ago king.  Of the four 2 were big and 2 were small.  Not much is know about the small ones but the 1st big one to be built the Vasa was on display in the museum.

 

It was the first of its kind to have two decks of Canons and was totally preserved.  It was under water for I think at least 200 years but supposedly the water around here doesn't have much salt in it and they use to dump all kinds of sludge in there so basically the environment was not susceptible to things that liked to eat wood.

The funny thing about this ship however is it wasn't stable it ended up being top heavy..  And they knew it but since no on really wanted to give a king bad news they thought they would try it out.  So the Vasa made it about 15 minutes before some wind caused it to start tipping sideways and the canon doors that were open started taking in water.  So it sank, but it sank in the bay and it didn't even make it fully under water they ended up cutting the masts so it wasn't in the way.

Some people did end up dying from the ship wreck.  There was little documented history of the people on the boat.  Guess it was part of the main crew and their families.  The families were suppose to get off before it really hit open water.  They found I think it was about 30 bodies.  In the museum they had information they figured out from teeth, injuries to the bones, where they were found and the items found near them.  It was really fascinating the little stories they would tell about old injuries or the the glass buttons defining their class or how much money they had in a purse.

Next stop wasn't nearly as interesting on the inside.  The outside was very nice.  We went into the Nordic Museum.  This had a history of Sweden.  One floor had a lot of furniture.  But one the main pieces I noticed were chairs.  In all shapes and sizes.

Another area had information on the indigenous people of Scandinavia.  With that information was hats and shoes and other home made goods

From here we had a little Mulled Wine.  Lots of cinnamon, very sweet and warm but great on a chilly wet day.  From the Vast which was on an island about three over from downtown we headed to downtown.  I guess Stockholm is made up of a bunch of islands, the only bad part is there is no really short cuts to get from one place to another.  but at least they make the views and the walks very pleasant.  We saw some giant Moose.

There was a very busy ice rink in the middle of the city.  It was created around a stature in the middle.

Oh and believe it or not this is a mens public bathroom.  Looking inside there is just a hole.

Another church as we were just strolling along.

We finally made it into the old town is your typical beautiful skinny streets with cobble stone.  

We went to the Noble Museum.  I never realized there was a Nobel peace prize (which is out of Oslo) as well as Nobele prices for literature, Physics and others. I read though some the the winners for Literature many of them had real life experiences to write about.  Weather it was Apartheid or some other segregation or discrimination they had experienced it.  In some cases many were even threatened after they wrote there opinions.