Sweden - Stockholm

The ship docked on time and we all trooped off to the awaiting bus. The plan for the day is straight onto the city tour followed by the optional excursion to the Wasa Ship (we've opted out), some free time, then to the Hotel to check in at about 4.00. After check in there is the evening walk round the Old Town, and a brief outing to Drottningholm Palace.

The Silje Line dock is well out of town and we get to the city centre passing not much of note except the Olympic stadium (another one!) and a house with some connection to Alfred Nobel, of Nobel Prize fame. The bus passes through the centre and "Sergels Torg" which is the meeting point for getting back on the bus during various parts of the day.

The first stop is the City Hall building across the river, well a river, anyway, where we spend about an hour going round a couple of jumbo sized rooms. One, the Blue Hall, is used for banquets, especially on the Nobel Prize winning days, with the podium where many a famous prize winner has given an acceptance speech - Note that it isn't actually blue and I can't remember why it was called that, something to do with the original intention of its design. The other room is massive with detailed mosaics adorning all walls - the mosaic layout was very carefully planned except for the late addition of benches at the base, which pushed the mosaic designs up a couple of feet resulting in the loss of two heads at ceiling level - Oops.

On then to another Island, passing a raft with a man adrift on it in the bay (it is a piece of modern art), so that the guide can give us a fantastic view of the City Hall across the river - do we have a photo stop - No (unbelievably) and it was a nice view, too. This island is the one with the old town on it, but the city tour doesn't include this bit of the city, that's an optional excursion, so we skirt round this bit - scandalous if you ask me, it should be part of the included city sightseeing!

We go beyond this island to a view point for a panoramic view of the city - unfortunately Stockholm does not have a good skyline for long panoramic views.

The bus returns to the centre and drops off the non-Wasa Shippers.

We need to eat and Euros are not taken, so we have to exchange some money. The Forex office had a massive queue and a ticketing system for which we were about 15 numbers behind the current one with no sign of any movement from the three windows in use.

After twenty minutes we give up and try and get something to drink in the Kungstradgarden by offering Euros - nope, they won't accept them, but the woman suggests we try the other Forex bureau in the NK shop, "there is never a queue there" she says, so off we go but decide not to join the 20 person long queue. Dilemma time we need Swedish money (it is Sweden, isn't it, yes). We trundle back to the original Forex bureau (are you following this), and we are STILL five numbers short of ours - we wait - we get money then we eat, drink and are pretty merry in the midday sun.

Suitably refreshed we continue our own city tour:

Kungstradgarden: Nice long promenade gardens with statues, flower beds and band stand with some entertainment (?) in progress.
Jakobs kirk: Nice church with very decorative doorways
National Museum: In search of some information or paintings by Knut Ekwall, and failing. There were a nice view across to the Palace and Old town, though.

View from National Museum to Old Town

The Opera House
The man in on the raft in the bay - picture stop
The main shopping street and views down to the old town
The main square, with what looked like bunting across it, but closer investigation revealed it to be clothing (washing out to dry - surly not)

The bus was waiting to take us to the Hotel which was a good distance out of town, with no sensible public transport option to do your own thing.

Old Town and Drottningholm Palace

So, later that same day, we are back on the bus heading towards the old town.

I have to say that for a tour round the old town this was pretty poor - I'd have preferred to have done it myself with a map in hand. Part of the tour was coffee and cake, which just show you how desperate they were to give the appearance of value for money. So where did we go:

Palace: Well not really - the bus dropped us off here.
A small statue thing - not in any of the guide books we had
Down a couple of streets - one particularly narrow one - Martten Trotzigs ("The narrowest street in...." I didn't quite catch where, probably old town)
Up another street, with badges on the door to indicate that the fire insurance had been paid, so that the fire brigade would put the fire out. The guide said "Most of the houses are build of wood, so if they catch fire they burn like paper" - possibly even like wood, too.
Coffee and biscuits in a cafe with the smallest spiral staircase in.... somewhere, didn't quite catch where.
Up to the back of the palace, then back to the bus.

The next part was over to Drottningholm Palace for an evening walk in the park - 'cos the palace was closed!

Now this was quite nice - they should have timed to arrive here sooner, gone round the palace and done the park a lot better and more detail. We just went round the park and saw some building from the outside - but not a full frontal of the Palace, though, because we had to get back to town to pick up those members who didn't want to go on the trip and were spending time centrally, unable to get back to the hotel easily. This holiday is a catalogue of cutting trips short mainly for logistical purposes and cramming as many optional excursions (extra money) into the deal as possible, St Petersburg being the classic example.

Anyway, back to Drottningholm: we start at the Chinese Pavilions, move round to the Guards Tent - built in 1781 it is build of wood and clad with iron sheeting and painted to resemble a tent and was extremely nice.
Down the garden, passing the "open air theatre" area, then fountains ending up at the rear of the Palace.

Back on the bus, pick up in the town, then back to the hotel and straight in for dinner, after which most people dispersed fairly rapidly back to their rooms. I attempted to check my e-mail on what appeared to be a free open access Internet connection in the lobby - over 500 e-mails and 95% will be junk. I was trying to find out how the Annular Solar Eclipse trip to Mexico went and what they saw - it appears that it was cloudy and most people saw very little. We made the correct decision to come here instead of Mexico.

Bed late, as usual.

On the road again

Up, breakfasted and away we go on the 522km/324mi straight line to Copenhagen, Denmark on mostly motorway (the E4).

Today England play Brazil in the World Cup Quarter Finals and I manage to find a radio station with it. Unfortunately it is a Swedish radio station with Swedish commentary, and I can only identify the play by the players names, and the occasional cry of GOAL! Good or bad play in interpreted from the tone of the commentary. At half time it is ett-ett and I need to borrow a guide book with numbers in it to get the score (1-1). In readiness for the second half I check the Swedish for two and three. The final score England ett, Brasil tva. (1-2 to you).

This was a long bus ride, so to help pass the time the tour manager played various tapes one of which was an Irish Comedian whose name I forget, but whose catchphrase seemed to be "write it down". He also played a Beatles tape which some people occasionally sang along to - now I don't mind folks singing along, but it would be less irritating if they sang the words to the song in the right order instead of guessing what came next (The prime offender was "Hey Jude").

What else can I say about the journey - it was a bus trip with comfort stops, a lunch stop (at Jonkoping), another comfort stop somewhere (can't remember where, except there was a big wooden Moose at the entrance), and eventually arriving at Helsingborg for the ferry across into Denmark.