Stockholm Day 2

With a full night's sleep and an awesome hotel breakfast we were off on our adventures in Stockholm, day 2. We left our luggage at the bus terminal so that we would be central and well-positioned to take the Flygbussarna to the airport for our later evening flight Off to the famous Vasa museum - leave it to the swedes in Stockholm to turn a titanic flop into one of Europe's great sightseeing attractions. The Vasa was ship built in the 1600's and sank 40 minutes into its maiden voyage when a breeze caught its sail and blew it over. Imagine, it was built with the most firepower with two decks of cannons with 500 carved wooden statues draping ships - painted in bright colours symbolic of the king's power. With this ship Sweden was preparing to establish its empire. Unfortunately the king's demands to build it more high than wide made it unstable and well it sank to the bottom of stockholm's harbour where it stayed for 333 years. It was rediscovered in 1956 and lifted and housed in a beautiful museum in 1990. It is the best preserved ship of its age anywhere in the world - 98% original. Amazing to see this.

In order to make sure that our Stockholm card was worth it, we did a quick 10 min tour of the Nordic Museum which looks like a Danish Renaissance Palace and reminded me a lot of the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. It offers a peek of 500 years of traditional Swedish lifestyles. Quick pics from our very speedy tour..

Next we were back in Gamla Sta for afternoon tea at Grillska Huset - a charitable organization run by Stockholms Stadmission. Having tea helped house the homeless at the same time, a good feeling.

So I guess you could say that we had 'Fika' today..

High atop the city involving climbing about 200 stairs we were treated to some lovely views.

Today we had a couple of re-fuelling stops - a bit of extravagance at stockholm's Grand Hotel..

Sweaters are different styles here than in Norway...

Man at work?

And a few interesting streetscapes..

And closing remarks from our time in Stockholm on behalf of Norweigian Air...