Another day, another country. The good thing is, that we are
on a ship and not having to pack and unpack each day. This ship visits 6
countries and starts in a 7th. So, this is a huge advantage of
cruising.
Anyway, insanely, I was awake at 6:15. Now, granted, we’d
changed time zones overnight and gotten back the hour we lost going to Estonia.
Still, this was not right and I tried to go back to sleep. I gave up at 6:50.
This did let me watch our cruising amongst the islands and then the docking at
Stockholm. That was cool. I was really surprised to see how close that ship was right behind us!
We went to breakfast at 8:10. It was nice to take our time,
since we did not have a tour booked for today. My husband had a clarinet
conference here in the early part of the century and my daughters and I had a
week to really do the city.
When we went back to the cabin and got washed up, I went out
on the veranda to check out the action on the wharf. What I saw was a huge line
of people waiting for the shuttle to town. We’d been told it was quite a walk,
so the city provided this shuttle that took 15 minutes to get into town. My
husband K was anxious to go down and join the line, but I knew from my
observations, that this was not a great idea. My daughter J concurred, when she
joined me. (K stayed in the cabin, reading.) We saw that when the shuttle came,
it was a double bus and seemingly made no dent in the line that continued to
grow. There were two buses in all and we timed them and it was about 30
minutes between them. We saw people giving up and going to the taxi area, which
was oddly hidden from their view on the ground. A third bus finally showed up
and we couldn’t tell that it improved the situation. We watched recycling and
trash being taken off the ship and fresh food being delivered. We also saw several ferries coming in across the way.
Finally, around 10:45, we thought it was time to get ready
and go. We were off the ship at 11:02 and joined the line. We were lucky enough
to get on the shuttle that arrived at 11:23. We were on the road at 11:29 and
it was clear and very warm.
At 11:42, we were off at the Opera House. We took some
photos in that area, before crossing the bridge to take the Rick Steves walking
tour of Gamla Stan, the Old Town of Stockholm. We could see both the Parliament
and the Royal Palace, since they are separated by just a canal. I wondered, if
the colors of the flowers were meant to evoke the flag. Yes, I know purple
isn’t blue, but maybe they couldn’t find good blue ones. Oh, and the picture of
the banner? I was wearing that brand of shoes!
We passed the random fountain built into the lower wall of
the palace and noted king Gustav III across the street, staring at the palace.
Evidently, we have him to thank for making Stockholm a classy capital. At
Rick’s direction, we also noticed the statues on the walls of the palace. At
the top of the sidewalk, we turned around to take a look at the harbor. Nice
view.
To our left was the Finnish church in what had been a royal
tennis hall. Quite an orange they chose for that paint! We were supposed to see
an obelisk in front of the Lutheran cathedral and we were perplexed until we
went up to the construction site in the photo and read the sign saying that it
was under renovation.
We were a bit ahead of a tour group and managed to get photos
of Iron Boy, before they totally
mobbed him. He’s the smallest statue in town and older ladies knit caps for him
in winter. Since it is supposed to be good luck, we did rub his head before
moving on.
In this old section, passageways are very narrow, but colors
are bright, as you see. The street in the next photo is Köpmangatan, a
cobblestoned, typical street and one of the oldest in town.
Since we’ve been here before, little shopping was necessary.
However, there was a shop window here with adorable tiny gnomes in it. Some
were sitting in stuffed chairs and I thought they were totally charming. J
convinced me to go in and find out the price, but, even though I took time to
look around, they were too busy to ask. So, we went back out to see St. George
slaying the dragon with the maiden (Stockholm) looking grateful. I’ve seen St.
George before, but this was the first maiden. Oh, and another elaborate manhole
cover.
As we approached Stortorget, the oldest square in the city,
I felt sure that I recognized it. I definitely recognized the story that the 80
or so white stones in the red house’s facade represented the victims of the
Stockholm Bloodbath of 1520. It seems the Danes were trying to grab power and
rounded up the aristocracy, merchants and priests who had opposed them and
beheaded them here. The buildings’ facades were also the crow-stepped and Dutch
gable of two miniature buildings I’d recently built.
Here, we found the Grillska Huset butcher shop and bakery
that Rick recommended and that had these old-style signs. These are not meant
to be cute by the way. Those figurative signs date back to the Middle Ages,
when people couldn’t read. The symbols were vital. Anyway, it was 12:55 and we were hungry. We
didn’t see much in the way of picnic tables that he said were in the square,
but the bakery did have some empty tables. It had to be cooler in there, too.
K and I got Coke Zero from a cold case and J got a Coke. We
got food to split: Dagens Pizza 50 kr, Krämbulle 20 kr, strawberry cup, and a
Smörlock, the large cinnamon thing, for 35. One cake in the case really bugged
J and using the free Wi-Fi, she found out that it was what she thought it was,
Princess cake. So, she bought us a slice of the green confection. It was a very
good meal and the pastries were great. We appreciated the Wi-Fi and the free
restroom in the restaurant part.
At 1:35, we moved on and headed down the street to the
Cathedral, snapping photos along the way. We did not go in the church, but
around it to Prästgatan or “Priests’ Lane, that dates back to the 15th
century. Although, before heading down the lane, we did duck into a couple of
shops looking for a pin and J’s mini Stockholm, which she did find. Back on the lane, we found the hoists that
we’ve seen on merchant buildings in other towns, as well as tie bolts that bind
the timber beams of the building together.
I recognized the Viking-age rune stone next to the cannon barrel from
the last time we were here. We found #46 with its medallion that told
firefighters back in the day that they’d paid for insurance and the house
should be saved in case of fire.
At Tyska Brinken, we turned to go visit the German Church,
which was actually the very first German Lutheran church, because Sweden became
Lutheran before northern Germany. (Back
in the day, each ethnic group got their own church.) The sign above the gate
says, “Fear God! Honor the King!” I was very unhappy that the church was
closed. Bummer!
We went down to Svartmangatan and followed it to the
viewpoint above Österlänggatan. Rick pointed out that the street below curves,
because it was the old shoreline back in medieval times. Land was reclaimed and
the old piers became lanes leading to new piers. Well, that’s cool!
We skipped the rest of the walking tour went down to that
street and followed it to the left. Soon, we saw St. George atop a street to
our right. We went up there to get closer to where we needed to be for the
bridge. This put us next to the shop with the gnome again. I took it as a sign
and went in and got him for 335 kr.
I wanted photos in front of the water, so we crossed over by Gustav's statue to take some before going too far. We walked past the palace with its marching guard and then
over the bridge to the Parliament for a couple of photos in front of it. We ran
into the guy and his wife from Cocoa Beach as we neared the bus stop, which was
on the street opposite the Opera House. They took an Uber into town, after
starting to walk, when the line was too long.
We got in the shuttle line at 2:38 and it was seriously hot.
The high was supposed to be 80, but we later learned it was 86- and just 6 less
than a week later! We were grateful when the shuttle arrived at 2:48. When we
arrived back at the port at 3:02, folks were sitting under Holland America’s
tent using free Wi-Fi. I tried to get it to work for 18 minutes and all I got
out of it was a nice chat with some Aussies. I gave up and went aboard to
shower and enjoy the veranda.
Dinner was at 5:15, as usual. K and I each had a nice
grilled portabella salad with sun-dried tomato bruschetta. J went for sweet
tomatoes and buffalo mozzarella.
For my entrée, I chose orange ginger pork, which was very
good. J had filet beef wellington, which was very juicy. K decided to copy me
again.
Dessert choices were weird. I couldn’t decide between dulce
de leche cookie dough cheesecake and the unique opportunity to try red cactus
pear ice cream. It was decided that I should get both, so that we could all try
the latter. J picked lemon sorbet, because she likes that. K got the very odd
espresso date pudding. He said it was good, but I won’t taste anything with
espresso in it.
We set sail at 6, but we missed that, because we were never
finished dinner that fast. When we did finish, we went out on the Promenade
(our part of the dining room was on that deck) to see what could be seen. We
had about a half hour of watching the ship slip through the archipelago, as
high above an assistant cruise director did commentary in the Crow’s Nest that
was also on outside speakers. Seriously nice!
At 7, we went to the stage show and, after that, went to the
shops to check out their sale. and looked out on the deck again. It was mainly to kill time before the Brahms
performance at 8 on the Lincoln Center Stage.
We went out on the Promenade again to check on our progress
and even looked out the back of the ship. K convinced us to go see whether or
not the bow was open. It was and we were out there until almost 10. (This first photo seems to have a modern gun turret, by the way.) We were
having a great time taking photos, joking, and laughing. The family speculation
powers cropped up as we watched idiots on jetskis zooming around the ship and
the ship finally passing the ship ahead of us, not to mention the fact that we
saw no people on shore and there seemed to be no lights on in any houses. A
ferry had been crossing back and forth way ahead of us, but when we got there
shortly before 10, it seemed to be docked for the night and there were no cars
in sight. The sunset and the moonrise were not to be believed. It was really
hard to limit myself to the photos that are here.
We went back to our cabins around 10, but I took some more
shots of my beloved full moon around 10:30. What a gorgeous way to end our
visit to Stockholm!
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