Saturday was our day to see the city. We first fortified ourselves at the Hilton’s breakfast buffet at 9:00. Then, before the sightseeing began, Gary and I went on a special mission to buy some champagne and wine at the nearest liquor store. It opened at 10:00 and was a half mile up the hill from the Hilton. We intend to bring the maximum number of bottles aboard the ship, 2 per stateroom, for our bon voyage celebration tomorrow as we set sail. We were successful in our alcohol acquisition, so then we returned to the hotel to get the kids and see the town.
We walked to Gamla Stan to get aboard the hop-on hop-off boat taking us to the Vasa Museum. There we saw the awesome 17th century Swedish warship that sank 20 minutes into its maiden voyage in 1628 because it was too top-heavy. It was raised from the harbor in the 1960s, carefully restored and preserved, and is now displayed in this museum.
After touring that museum, we walked to nearby Skansen, an open air museum displaying homes and other buildings from all over Sweden, showing how the Swedes used to live and work. We went into a farm laborer’s home and heard a little about what life was like for them, which was probably similar as our some of our ancestors’ lives. There’s also a small zoo of Nordic animals there, which we walked through. We got lunch just outside the Skansen entrance at a small burger/hot dog/fish & chip stand.
The final sightseeing event of the day was another boat ride. To get to the dock where it started, we took another short ride on the hop-on hop-off boat, then walked across a small island to the downtown pier. We used our pass to get our “Under the Bridges of Stockholm” tickets, then in the 20 minutes before the boat was due to leave, we enjoyed some delicious Italian soft ice cream nearby. The boat ride started at 4:00 and took us on a 2.5-hour cruise around the islands that Stockholm is located on, with an audio recording and headphones interpreting the sights around us. It was a very relaxing and pleasant way to end the day. After the end of the ride, we walked back across Gamla Stan to our hotel.
After some time in the hotel’s executive lounge, we walked to a Thai restaurant up the hill, near the liquor store we had visited in the morning, and had a good dinner there.
Lori's Travels 