Last Day in Stockholm

Here we are, relaxing after our last Swedish dinner at a restaurant in Gamla Stan. The week was certainly a memorable one as we learned all kinds of things dealing with Swedish History and the Swedish culture.

We nearly walked our feet off today touring Skansen, a 75 acre outdoor open air museum, the first in the world of its kind.  It was the brainchild of the same man who built the Nordic museum and has been in existence since the late 1800's. The old town not only featured houses that were authentic from days past, but it was also a living history museum, with people dressed in period clothes assuming the personalities of people from past days.  Marty and I had quite a laugh from some of the antics of these characters, one of whom was the "Doctor" who claimed to have some pills in his doctor bag that would be of great benefit to me, and to Marty as well!

There was just so much to see and we spent at least 4 hours walking through the various displays that are beautifully presented.  It was certainly a fun experience for us. Marty's favorite part was the matchstick museum.  Go figure.

We began the day at the Vasamuseet.  This was a fascinating museum that involves a warship that was built by Gustav II back in the early 1600's.  The maiden voyage of the boat lasted 20 minutes before the sail got caught in a gust of wind, resulting in the boat  leaning to one side, water filling into the cannon wells, and the ship sinking in a manner of 15 minutes.  The vessel sat in the mud until the mid 1900's until the Swedes decided to make the effort to rescue it, move it to a museum building, and restore it to its original glory.  It contains 98% of the original materials.  It is certainly awesome to walk into this building and see a huge Viking ship in tact in the middle of the room.

The history behind the ship involved Gustav II and his cousin, who was the king of Poland at the time.  Poland and Sweden were at war at the time, and Gustav insisted that he needed to have a larger,  more impressive ship than Poland would have ever seen, in his fleet of ships.  The king was so worried about making a "bigger, more impressive" ship that he never took the time to look at the structural logistics of the ship.  So, as a result, he had this fabulous looking ship that ended up sinking in short time on its maiden voyage. So, the king was denied of his bragging rights without ever even setting eyes on the vessel, as he had been off the shores of Poland, awaiting the arrival of his brainchild, when the maiden voyage took place. Obviously Gustav was not happy with the end result, but the good news is that no one was punished for the mishap because the man at fault for the demise of the Vasa was Gustav himself, and you know well enough that he was not going to incarcerate himself for his own stupidity!

Well, the Stockholm adventure is drawing to a close.  Tomorrow night Marty and I should be, once again, hanging with the dogs. I hoped that you enjoyed our adventures!  I know that I did.