Stockhom, Sweden

Upon arrival in Sweden, we boared a much, MUCH smaller boat for our "Hop on, Hop off" boat tour.

 Jonas and Evan peer out the window as our tour boat zipped past our massive cruise ship.

This citadel was built in the 1600s but then blown up by mistake.  It was rebuilt in 1845.

Our first stop was the Vasa Museum.  The Vasa was a Swedish war ship.  It took two years to build and was to be the most poweful war ship of its time.  It was built with functionality of course, but also with intricate beauty.  However, 1300 meters (less than a mile) into its maiden voyage, the ship sank.  It did not have enough balast to support the two gundecks of very heavy and very many cannons. 

It lay there in the harbor for 333 years before it was raised to the surface in 1961.  After 17 years of conservation it is now in the museum.  This is the ornate stern of Vasa.

Here's how they believe the stern looked when she sailed based on paint residue on the wood.  Beautiful!

The was a recreation of the inside of the ship.  Ezra and Jonas are manning the cannons.

After the Vasa Museum, we walked to Skansen: the oldest open-air museum in the world.  But first, Jonas had to make a Swedish phone call.

The gang preparing to enter Skansen.  "This is the place to visit historic Sweden in miniature. 150 farms and dwellings from different parts of the country were disassembled and transported here."  It also has native animals and a children's zoo.  It was huge.  We simply did not have time to see it all.

This might have been the weirdest thing we saw.  It was a little gazebo with this "Nappstation" box o' binkies.  There were no signs in English, so we were a little confused on what was supposed to happen here.  Free pacifiers so one could snuggle up on a wooden bench and take a Swedish snooze?  A cool way for parents to try to get their children to lose the paci?  I don't know...

Jonas near the "Nappstation".

This is the wooden Seglora Church built in 1729 was moved here in 1916 from a parish in Vastergotland.

"The Hällestad belfry is originally from the Hällestad parish in northern Östergötland. More than 40 meters high, it is one of Sweden's highest bell towers. The belfry was built in 1732-33."

I believe this was The Oktorp Farmstead.  "It comes from Halland and was moved to Skansen in 1896. The Oktorp Farmstead was the first farm to be erected there in its entirety. It shows what a farmstead in the flat countryside in Halland looked like in the 1870s, when the Lundqvist family, Åke and Christina and their daughter Hanna, aunt Beata, grandmother Ingeborg and their two farm-hands lived there."  The lady is showing Rachel pictures of the family.  She said the ceiling was so low in order to keep the heat in. 

I also really liked the school.  For some reason I didn't get any pictures there.  The school master had an attached residence where he and his family stayed.  They also said that since the salary was so meager that teachers often kept bees and relied on the income from their honey.  There were hives around the school in Skansen. 

We made our way back to the tour boat and "hopped on".  This is the National Museum.  Our guide said it is often mistaken for the royal palace.

Ezra and a royal guard outside the palace.

This was a teeny statue in a garden that for some reason everyone makes a big fuss about.  You're supposed to rub his head for luck.  Ezra did that, but then he tried to take some of the money lying there, much to the crowd's disapproval (we didn't let him take the money, although I don't think the "luck" would have been adversely affected). 

Mike and the boys in front of the Nobel Museum.

The heart of the Old Town/Gamla Stan.

The Stockholm Cathedral is the oldest church in Gamla Stan.

Under the light on the wall of the house is a medallion with a Phoenix on it.  During the middle ages, cities were plagued by fires.  If I remember correctly, the guide book said that if a home had this Phoenix, the owners had invested in fire insurance. 

This was some Viking art on street corner.

Tyska kyrkan (German Church).

The gang in front of a bank and looking at a crazy statue of some dude.  Jonas insisted I take his picture with "that man".  I didn't include the picture here.

The Royal Palace.

Some interesting architecture.

Here is where my pictures end.  A sad thing happened to my memory card at some point and I lost all of my pictures from the end of Stockholm (what was in this blog was basically it from the city tour, but I had some amazing pictures of the sunset/moonrise over the Swedish archipelago on our way out of the country on the ship), all of Talinn, Estonia, and the morning of St. Petersburg, Russia.  So very, very sad considering we'll probably never make it to those places again.  We are thankful for the memories and experiences, but those are a little harder to share with you.  I'll share a few things from Talinn on the next blog.