Good morning!
We started our day at a lovely cafe in Gamla Stan -- with fresh quiche, salad and bread for me and Mom and Sister had pastries. I should mention here that the Swedes are very fond of their pastries and nearly every cafe has a heaping display of gorgeous pastries and goodies. I've not taken part in them too much as I've always been more hungry than a pastry can fill, but the bites I've had of Mom and Sister's have been spectacular.
Yesterday's quiche for me was salmon and spinach -- spectacular:) The bread served with it was a hearty whole grain variety and very dark in color. I fell in love with it and will beg the cafe to give me the recipe as it was unbelievably good.
We've eaten well here each day, with plenty of fresh vegetables and ingredients. Nothing here is really fried and most everything we get is served with a salad. I ate salad at all three meals yesterday.
After breakfast we went to the ferry boat for a hop-on, hop-off excursion to Djurgarten, an island that is part of Stockholm which used to be the King's official hunting grounds. It was opened to the public in the late 1800s and since that time, it has served as both a garden/park area and home to a number of museums. We went to two yesterday.
The first was the museum of the warship Vasa. It was built between 1683-1686 and on its maiden voyage it sank about 3000 meters from where it was built into the cold waters of the Baltic. The king at the time was so humiliated he ordered everyone to forget about it and it became the stuff of legend. In 1961, an explorer was determined to find it and did, then followed a slow hauling of the ship up from the depths. Yes, about 85% of the original ship was there and it was slowly hauled to shore where it was then put into a dry dock and restored.
It is immense and would have housed about 300 navy men when it was fully staffed. The museum is wonderful with lots of artifacts and other things that they dredged up when it was hauled up from the sea floor. Fabulous.
Next was Skansen, an open air museum with buildings from all around Sweden. The buildings were representative of all of Sweden, with post offices, lodges, farmhouses and churches. For those of you that have been to Amish Acres in your younger days, it is kind of like that but with less kitche. It was quite beautiful and lovely and even had a zoo of sorts. There were bears (with cubs!), reindeer, elk, seals ... all the animals one would find in Sweden.
After we were finished, we walked back to the ferry and relaxed as it took on stops at several islands in Stockholm. By this time we were absolutely beat and took a short nap back at the hotel for an hour before returning back out for dinner. We went back to the English pub, Pickwick's, and I had the herring/onion/potato dish again and throughly enjoyed it.
Today is an open top bus tour, tour of city hall and getting information on our day tomorrow. I believe we will take a ferry out to Birka, the oldest Viking settlement in Lake Malaren.
Don't want to come back, it is far too lovely here. Weather in the 70s with 50s at night, 20% humidity and glorious, wonderful people. I cannot imagine a lovelier vacation.
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