another long weekend = another country! this time it was stockholm in sweden. We got in at about 11.30pm and by the time we reached the city it was alive and happening! lots of people were out, but we walked straight to our hotel and after skyping steve & ris and seeing little hannah(so cute!) we crashed for the night in our dungeon apartment.
We got up on saturday and found the place to buy our cards to hire bikes (they were only like £22 or something for 3 days) and went and found ourselves a bike! It's pretty cool, they have about 70 bike stations around the city and you can pick up / drop off your bike at any of them, the only thing is that you have to return them every 3 hours (to give everyone else a chance). I've been told they also have this in paris, it's such a cool thing, I reckon more cities - including brisbane! - should do this.
So we cycled around for about 4 hours and did a big loop of stockholm which was a really cool way to see the entire city. Then we went to the Vasamuseet where we had just enough time to see the short film and do the tour. The Vasa is a big viking war ship which sank shortly after it launched! and only 333 years later they got it back out of the water again and then spent years restoring it and now it has it's own museum. It's a pretty interesting story actually, I just can't find the info to put here as to why it sank but there were a number of reasons like there was some stability test that actually failed but the admiral chose to ignore that etc. Also the reason it survived underwater is apparently because of the lack of shipworm in those waters as they can't survive there cos it's not salty enough.
We cycled around a bit more and then enjoyed a nice long dinner at this Pelikan restaurant where we sampled some tasty swedish food/drink - a pickled herring platter with herring served in 5 different sauces, and then we had swedish meatballs with mashed potato and lingonberries which was delicious! We ended up having the same the following night at a different beer hall cos it was so good!
Sunday we did a 3hr cruise through the archipelago which wasn't too exciting ;) but it was good to get out and see it. I would recommend doing it on a faster boat though, ours was so slow, the only cool thing about the boat is that it can actually crush through ice in the winter. Then we went and visited Skansen, an open air museum which was very similar to one we went to in Norway, where someone has gathered all these traditional Swedish houses and put them in one spot and also gathered some nordic animals for us tourists to see. The animals were cool - see the photos :)
Monday we got back on the bikes and had lots of fun riding past the water along the cycle paths (which are everywhere!) and walked through the old city Gamla Stan and then made our way to the Historical Museum which showcased Scandinavian history from the Stone Ages through to the Vikings. Then one last stop to the main shopping street in Norrmalm and that was our trip over!
The photos aren't too exciting, it was more enjoyable to just wander and cycle around more than anything! but here are some anyway...
