What a long day. When we come this way we usually will go to bed the day of arrival and awaken spontaneously at about 4am the next morning. Then day two is we go to bed and don't wake up until around 11am the next day. By the third day we're adjusted and we start to get up at a normal time.
So, like always, today I was awake by 5am, tossing and turning and not wanting to look at the clock. I'd force my eyes closed and try to "sleep" more hoping that like a half hour would go by with each cycle. Invariably though I glance at the clock and perhaps 3 minutes has gone by. Makes for a really long wait. This morning I just got dressed and went outside to explore. Not a half block away is a McDonald's and everyone knows how much I hate McDonald's but its just so darn convenient. Anyways, I strolled past this one at around 6:15 and saw that it was open. Of course I went in for breakfast. My Swedish wasn't good enough to ask for a Coke with my meal instead of OJ but it was nevertheless still very tasty. I wandered around for a bit longer in awe of the fact that the sun was quite high in the sky and it wasn't even 7am yet. I think the sun comes up at around 4 in the morning and sets at around 10:30 with it being 11 before it really gets too dark to see color and detail in things. After dinking around for a bit I went back to the room and tried to sleep. Of course that was useless as by then I was completely awake. So I laid there daydreaming about being back in Stockholm again. At around 8:30 I left the room again to go to the local store to find Anneka some pastries and OJ. Brought that back and a tub of fresh raspberries from a little fruit vendor on the street. 11 bucks. I'm still shocked at what things cost here. My breakfast - a breakfast sandwich, a small OJ and a small hot chocolate was almost 7 dollars.
Anneka ate and got dressed and we left the hotel for the day. We started by wandering in Gamla Stan - Old town - for a little while before trotting off to see the Vasa Museum. The Vasa is seriously one of the coolest things you'll ever see because it is the only one of its kind anywhere in the world. It is a warship built in the 1620's that sank in Stockholm's harbor a mere 15 minutes into its maiden voyage because it was severly top heavy and an unexpected gust of wind basically blew it over. It was not the largest warship of its time but it was the most heavily armed. It had two decks of guns and not enough ballast and so it was likely to sink sometime. the waters off Stockholm are not salty enough to support the types of wood bores that normally eat a sunken vessel into oblivion so the Vasa in essence sat at the bottom of the harbor for over three hundred years before being rediscovered and restored. The restoration was amazing. The boat is basically pickled in Glycerin and that isn't what is so amazing about it. What is hard to comprehend is that they sprayed Glycerin onto it continuously starting in 1962 and ending in 1987. That's 17 years! They found it in 1958 and the museum it sits in today was finally opened to the public with the restored and preserved Vasa inside in 1990. I can't imaging working on something for 30 years! Of course I say that and I bet I'll still be working on my house 30 years from now...
From the Vasa we walked to the Skansen open air museum located nearby. What a thrill to go back. Skansen is was the first of its kind open air museum in Europe started in the late 1800's. They essentially acquire buildings and farm houses and what not from all over Sweden and take them apart piece by piece to then reassemble them within the park. So, what you get is a tour of centuries worth of structures, ranging from a landless poor mans house from the 1600's to a southern Swedish noblemans house from the same time period. We've often stated that castles and palaces show how the king of any given country lived and buildings like what are in Skansen show how the other 99.99% of the countries population lived.
The weather today was flawless! Yesterday when we arrived we took a nap and then went out exploring in the early evening and we had reason to worry about the weather since it was rather blustery and quite cool. But today was perfect. It was probably 75 degrees and clear blue skies. Just ideal for being outside.
After Skansen at around 7 we decided to do something we'd never done before on a trip - we went to the movies. We found out that the Swedes don't dub any foreign movies into English so we went to see Harry Potter. Gotta admit that it was rather well done. But it was pricey. Based on my figurin' it cost about 32 bucks for the two of us to go. No 10 dollar pails of popcorn no 8 dollar jugs of soda. Just two tickets - 32 dollars. They charge by the hour for movies here. So, the longer the movie the higher the price. I guess that makes sense. Anyways, expensive as it was it was still fun to go. From there we walked back to the hotel stopping for an icecream in a homemade waffle cone on the way.
So, here we are. Showered and ready for bed. It's about 1:30 in the morning and the sun will be coming up in about three hours. They need daylight savings time in a serious way here. Suns up at 4 and there isn't a soul out there in it. Fingers are crossed that tomorrow will be as nice as today.
Won't post anything tomorrow since we'll be on the boat heading to Helsinki. Not sure we'll get an internet connection to be able to post. So, likely we'll post again on the day after tomorrow
So, Fahrvegnugen, or however they say goodnight in Swedish!
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