Stockholm, Sweden

Sunday, September 14, 2008
Stockholm, Sweden

09/13/2008 Stockholm, Sweden the capital, a city of 1.5 million is a beautiful city that took us five hours to find as our ship entered a maze of what looked like rivers, and lakes winding through small and large islands. As we got closer to Stockholm the islands started to fill with summer homes then larger permanent residences each with a flag pole and a small white pennant flying from the top; we never did find out the significance of this pennant. My biggest regret concerning Stockholm was that we did not get to stay longer. Stockholm is built on 14 separate islands, so today our Hop-On-Hop-Off was a boat, a nice change, which shuttled us from one location to another. Although it was efficient if minimized our contact with the Swedish people, not a good thing. Stockholm is a medieval city, modern city, and sea port and you are never more then five minutes from any of it’s diverse parts. We visited the Royal Palace; I am palaced out, where we toured the Royal Apartments. Our guide made the tour; he injected humor and insight of both past and current royalty that brought the apartment to life. We then went to the Vasavarvet, where the grand warship of 1628 is on display. The story is that the King of Sweden had this warship, the largest warship ever built, built and on it’s maiden voyage it sunk in the harbor with a crew of 144 because the King had demanded that it have “more cannons” and was thus top heavy. When the wind caught its sails it flipped over and went to the bottom of the harbor. The wreckage of the Vasa was not discovered until 1956 in 40,000 cubic yards of mud. The mud actually helped to preserve the ship and its contents and thus makes for a phenomenal display of a 17th century warship. The entertainment onboard has been exceptional. Each night we have dinner at 6:30, a stage show at 8:00, then Nita and I go up for a bit of dancing, then to bed by 10:30. Our morning starts between 5:30 and 6:00, up to the Garden Café for coffee, to the gym for a workout, then the Blue Lagoon for breakfast (s small intimate café rather then the cattle call us at the Garden Café where Ron and Avie go, Ron needs to meet “new people” everyday, we then meet for our excursions or lunch on Sea Days)