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July 2004, A View around Stockholm

I was working in London at the time and decided to head up to Stockholm for the weekend and see some friends and have a good wander around. Weather was great and so I decided to have a good yomp around the islands that make up central Stockholm. Starting from the hotel at Vasaplan - I was staying at the Nordic Sea - I headed down to Nybroviken where the pleasure boats go from. From here you can see down to Djurgarden and the Wasa museum but that was for the next day.

From Nybroviken I headed towards the Grand Hotel and onto Skeppsholmen. Here you'll find an old masted ship moored which I think used to be a training vessel but is now a youth hostel/hotel. Very picturesque here as you're looking onto Gamla Stan - the old town - and the royal palace.

Here is a panorama of the view from the bridge heading onto Skeppsholmen towards Gamla Stan, the palace and kungstragarden.

Once on Skeppsholmen you're sandwiched between Sodermalm and Djurgarden. The island isn't very big so I walked along towards Grona Lund the fairground that's on Djurgarden. The small ferry in the picture is a great little trip from the fair to Slussen at the junction of Sodermalm and Gamla Stan. In the first picture you can see the Nordisk museum and the Wasa museum which are before Grona Lund.

Once at the end of Skeppsholmen you get a great view of Djurgarden towards the ferries moored on Sodermalm which go towards Russia, Finland and Estonia. I took this panorama which shows the Nordisk museum on the left with the tall spire, Grona Lund in the middle and the ferry terminal on the right.

I'm not sure what was going on with these cows but they were all over the city. In fact it was something happening all over Europe that Summer each one having some significance which escapes me.

From here I headed back over the bridge to Gamla Stan (there's only one way on and off the island) and through the narrow streets towards the Tre Kronors or City Hall which is on the end of Kungsholmen island. From there it was only a short way back to Vasaplan and the hotel.

One of the highlights of the Nordic Sea hotel is that the people who run the ice hotel in the north of Sweden have built an ice bar in the reception area. You get a warm jacket to wear as its about -5C inside and everything including the bar and glasses are made of ice. Its a great place to chill on a hot day, you can read more here.

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July 2004, Around the Wasa Museum, Stockholm

Next day I headed down to the Wasa museum on Djurgarden. I've been here loads of times and usually when someone comes to visit but it really is a great museum. I'm not going to try and explain in detail so you can read all about it here but basically it is an original Swedish galleon that capsized on its maiden voyage only a few hundred metres from its berth. Its an incredible site and the following hopefully will give you a taste of what's to see. Unfortunately due to my camera skills and the low lighting some of the pictures are blurred.

Being buried in the silt and water for so long the paintwork on the ship has gone the archeologists have been able to recreate parts of the colour scheme to show what the ship would have looked like.

Also as part of the museum are cutaways of the ship and lifesize models of the decks to show what life would have been like on the ship. There are also visual shows and text describing Sweden's navy at the time as well as the settlements created around Stockholm to build the ship's for king Gustav's navy. It really is a great museum that you'll spend hours in and not notice the day going.

Of course at the end of it you really need a beer and the one place for me in Stockholm is Pelikan on Sodermalm. Its one of the few old fashioned beer halls left in Sweden and does some great Swedish food especially the S.O.S (Sill, Ost, Smor) starter and Swedish meatballs for main. After a few Hallands Flader shots you may start to see things including the mermaid.

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