Day 2 - Sep. 3rd.

Predictably, I slept like a rock, and it felt great.  I had a nice Swedish breakfast with coffee and yogurt and muesli.  They have a strange type of pourable yogurt in Sweden--sort of halfway between the consistency of our typical American yogurt, and kefir.  In any case it was pretty good, and a nice way to eat your morning cereal.

I didn't spend too much time before getting into the shower.  Bathrooms in Sweden are, I feel, a great example of Swedish practicality.  Every one I saw was tiled, and built with a drain in the floor.  Jonannes had a flimsy little shower curtain in a standard clawfoot style bathtub, it didn't even wrap around the tub.  I guess it was mostly for modesty, in case someone else was in the bathroom, but it did little to contain any water.  It didn't matter though, because the room was designed to get wet.  Water sloshing out of the tub?  No problem!  It will drain through the floor.  Another demonstration of foresight (or perhaps hard lessons learned ages ago): the plumbing was visible on the outside of the walls, so if you had to fix a leaky pipe, there was no need to bust a hole in the wall to access it.  Smart.

I tore myself away from the admiration of the loo, and we went out to explore more of Stockholm.  In the small amount of research that I did before the trip, one of the museums that seemed to gain universal accord was the Vasa museum.  So, without any better plans, we decided to make it a destination for the day.

We did a little bit of exploring along the way.  We happened across this old church, The Church of St. Clara.  It's apparently unremarkable in comparison to other historic churches, but it was still more impressive than your average church.

We passed by the Stockholm Kulturhus, which was the cultural center and the site of a rare piece of Swedish whimsy (that's a mannequin),

A nice park and promenade along the way:

And finally we arrived at the Vasa Museum.  You can read the Wikipedia page for more details, but basically, the Vasa was built to be the pride of the Swedish navy in the 1620's.  Unfortunately, shipbuilding wasn't an exact science at the time and through several poor turns of fate, the Vasa sank shortly into its maiden voyage.  Lots of fingers were pointed at who may have been at fault, but ultimately nobody was held accountable (quite probably because the king was partly to blame).

In any case, the Vasa was not forgotten.  Various expeditions over the years tried to find it, but it wasn't until the 1960's that it was actually able to be recovered.  Remarkably, since the Baltic sea doesn't host a seaworm that eats wood, the Vasa remained largely preserved.  They were able to raise it from the depths, and have been restoring/preserving it ever since.  It now sits indoors in a dark, climate controlled sarcophagus, viewable by the public.

We managed to tag along with an English guided tour right as we entered, and got a nice little rundown of the ship's history.

The darker wood is the original oak, the lighter wood are new pieces for restoration.  The stern here was rife with symbolism.

 

The poop deck...seriously, that square box is one of two toilets.

 

A sculpture of a Norse or Greek god, meant to intimidate the enemy.  Therry is clearly intimidated.

Ahoy! Note that the platform is slanted, probably would have been a good 150 above the water. Not for the faint of heart. 

Yar har har

A cool model of how the Vasa would have looked under operation.

Another cool model.  This one shows how the boat was likely painted--a lot more vibrant than the Goonies-esque ship we see today. 

 

That bulbous area on the side was for musketeers to fire out of.

Another view of the decorative stern.

There were four floors to explore, and we spent a good three and a half hours there.  We got tired and cold though, due to the darkness and climate control. By that time, we figured we'd seen enough.  Stepping out into the daylight felt great.  We hadn't taken more than a few steps before we were accosted by an elderly American man asking about things to see in the area.  He seemed surprised, no, incredulous that we were American as well.  He was on a cruise and they had the afternoon to roam around.  He asked where we were from, as if he were quizzing us, and was further surprised to learn that we were from Seattle.  Apparently from the area himself, he asked us if we'd ever heard of Lynnwood.  Yes, it's one of the larger suburbs, and I drive through it daily.  He still didn't seem entirely sure of us, but accepted our alibi, wished us a good trip and eventually ambled off.

We walked around looking for a place to eat, and settled on a kebab place, basically a burger joint, but Mediterranean style.  The bill was around $25 for a couple plates and small fountain drinks.  I thought it was a little steep, but then reasoned that a meal of similar proportions wouldn't be much less if we were in a touristy area of Seattle (we happened to be right next to Stockholm's amusement park).  The food was good, but my digestive system had to work overtime to deal with it.  Therry sadly was the victim of friendly fire for the next day or so.  

We wanted to check out the Nordic History Museum, which offered free admission after 5:00 PM, and we had some time to kill.  So we wandered around and ended up exploring what was once the royal game park of the island.  Now, it's a large city park with some historic buildings and monuments scattered around.  It was about as idyllic as you could want for a city park, very well manicured and serene.  I almost felt blasphemous imagining how great of a disc golf course could be installed there.

The gates to the game park

One of the cool old houses in the park. Not sure how one got to live in one of these places, other than knowing the right kind of people.

Not really knowing what to look for, we decided to follow signs for Rosendall's slott.  Slott means "castle" in Swedish, so of course we were interested in seeing a castle.  It turned out to be understated to say the least.  

Nice, but we're not exactly talking Neuschwanstein

A paparazzi style glimpse of the queen's palace.

It turns out that Rosendall's slott was kind of a getaway bungalow for King Karl XIV Johan, in the 1820's, a way to get away from the hustle and bustle of the royal palace.  It was kind of refreshing to see royalty living in a more modest fashion. The palace is open for tours in the summer, but we were a few days late.  We found flyers for a self guided walking tour though, and that was good enough.

The back yard. 

Now that's what I call a bird bath.

Yeah, I could live here.

Not sure what this building originally was, but it was pretty durn cool.

Another house for a fortunate "friend of the family"

'Murcans like Sweden!

After our pleasant walk through the park, we'd killed enough time to make our way to the Nordic  Museum.  

The museum is basically what the name implies, a history of Scandinavian culture, though unsurprisingly, much of it centering on Sweden.  As mentioned, entry was free, and we were able to get little audio guide things.  They were pretty cool, they had an infrared pointer which you could point at different exhibits and hear about the display.

Visitors are greeted by a huge Gustav Adolphus, father of modern Sweden and the guy behind the Vasa

 

 

Another tourist offered to take our pic, complete with our nerd 'phones

The museum turned out to be mildly interesting, but in the end, we were really glad that we hadn't paid for it.  The architecture of the building was really cool, but literally the only picture that either of us took of the exhibits was this piece of work:

Did someone say toad stool?  har har har

 It had been a long day, and we were pretty spent by the time we were done with museum.  We made our way back to the apartment, but Therry had us stop off along the way for a photo op of the city.

Yeah, it was a pretty good view...

We got back on the train and headed to the apartment but not before stopping off to get some food from the market by the station.  We picked up some basic supplies, and decided on some frozen pizzas for dinner.  It was quick and easy, and dammit, pizza sounded good.  We also got some ice cream, because, dammit, ice cream sounded good too.  I volunteered to pay for the groceries, and didn't really know what I was getting into.  

I got to the counter, the cashier rung up all our food, and I swiped my card through the card reader (of course the display was all in Swedish.)  She said something. She said something again. I realized then that she was talking to me and not her coworker, and I was just standing there like an idiot. I told her that I didn't speak Swedish, and she apologized and spoke in English. I guess she'd been repeatedly telling me to hit the green button.  But it wasn't that simple.  Europeans have different credit cards than we do, with RFID chips, and PINs.  Technically I had my debit card, but I wanted to use credit since the fees would be less.  Since I didn't have a high tech European card, they had to process my card differently and check my ID and whatnot. It was apparent that it was one of those transactions they train on, but never have to actually do.  I felt like the asshole who whips out a checkbook and stack of coupons at the grocery store.  They were friendly and all,but I still felt a little embarrassed.  

We got out of there and had some cheap Swedish frozen pizza, which was better than our American cheap pizza, but honestly, anything would have been delicious by that point.

Pizza n' pajamas.  Awwwww yeah.