Stockholm

Amazingly, we arrived in Stockholm to some blue skies.  A little break in the rainy weather gave a real shine to our destination.  We had visited the Viking village, Birka, mostly standing in mist with occasional real rain.  In case you are wondering, there were only ghosts and the pretty young archeologist there to tell us the story of the village. 

It was a dramatic story of pillaging and plundering.  No, wait.  That was Conan the Barbarian. 

Actually, she said there were only a few men with the job description of “Viking.”  Most were farmers and fishermen, even the Vikings when they were home did their own laundry.  Sweden has always had a progressive society.  Of course, doing laundry I imagine was skinning hides and cutting new lace-up straps. 
 

 On to the last of the locks.

Lock closed

And a fine lock it was too.  We came into Stockholm’s harbor and watched the beautiful buildings along the shores of any of the 14 islands of the archipelago and the beautiful boats of widely varying sizes at the wharfs.

Lock open

We are coming Stockholm!

We docked and disembarked and said our goodbyes to our new friends.  Won’t they be surprised when we really do show up in Bavaria to be their guests!  A cab took us to the hotel, where we crashed. 

Wilhelm Tham Crew

We arose refreshed to partly sunny skies and no rain in the forecast.  Well, actually, we couldn’t tell since we don’t speak or read  any number of languages, including Swedish.  But the tiny symbol on my iPhone ap didn’t look like a rain cloud so, no we don’t need our umbrellas.  Naturally, this was hubris.

We went first to the Vasa Museet to see the big boat.  Now, I was really impressed with the Viking ships in Oslo.  They were truly fantastic.  Birdie said the Vasa ship was a lot bigger.  At this moment, I am trying to come up with a comparison of the proper magnitude, but nothing seems to be right.  “Blown away” seems close, yet still inadequate.  Go there.  It is of Titanic proportions and fate. 

 After a sunny lunch on the veranda and an ice cream cone, we walked to the big museum next door and wandered through.  Another “Wow!”  We had scheduled our tours to coincide with the times the facilities were open (and closing).  So now it was 5 PM and time for us to visit Skansen.  Two notes here.  First, it was now raining steadily.  At least the girls looked cute in their thin rain panchos.  Second, all the buildings were closing at Skansen because of the rain.  We returned the next day and realized what a good choice it was to return.  We spent most of the next day there, looking at the many exhibits from years gone by.  The Skansen museum predates Williamsburg in the US.