Stockholm 22-23 August

Bit slack on the blog front the sun was shining and our internet ran out.

Now we have a  new months allowance and I will catch up.

Lunch was at a nice bay where you could walk for ages and not get over your knees.







We stayed on the way to Stockholm in a carpark by a very nice bay on a fjord and ate all our meals out at the picnic table ( as do the scandinavians in any weather)

our front lawn and picnic table

The next morning we drove to Stockholm arriving too late to do anything but sit in the sun and read. We stayed in a nice camp with lots of grass and facilities. The bathroom had a sauna ( one in each male and female) so I had a sauna and a shower.  They had a changing room then you walked through to the showers which had no doors or curtains ....I had my sauna and shower at night and was the only one there which suited me.

The next day we got the train into the city centre and walked around the old town. It was a lot more european than I expected the same big palaces and square bank buildings. With the cobbled streets it felt very like a big italian city.

The palace guards were changing, they all seemed to be very young women.

The  centre city was pedestrianised and had all the shops from back home, Zara, H&M, Boots, body shop...

But also a lovely flower market.

I got to hug a moose

the reality of the human form and the ideal

The next morning we had a long chat to our neighbours from Luxembourg and the moved reggie into town and went to the Wasa museum.
"The Vasa ship capsized and sank in Stockholm 1628. After 333 years on the seabed the warship was salvaged. Today Vasa is the world's only preserved 17th century ship and the most visited museum in Scandinavia." What you see below was all preserved in the mud on the bottom of the sea. The king wanted it to be very ornate and it ended up top heavy and tilted over and sank on it's first voyage . It  didn't get out of the harbour.  The pollution in the sea ( all the city rubbish etc ) protected the ship as algae couldn't grow. It is 98% original, only the ropes and a couple of beams are modern.

link to the history

We then had a ferry trip and a train, collected reggie and headed out of town. We were only an hour down the road when a massive electrical storm started. Fork and sheet lightning, thunder and rain , so after 15 mins or so we found a park and decided to see the night out.  It stopped for about an hour but now a second lot are coming over and the rain is quite loud and there is great flashes of light. Glad we in in the dry.