Travel Blog...

We took a two hour bike tour around Stockholm city, there is many bike lanes and the guide was great.

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Skansen open air museum – Sweden in a nutshell. Dwellings and farms, traditions, food and animals originating in Sweden and the Nordic region. There was folk dancing and singing around a maypole as it was a mid-summer weekend. Jana joined us for the afternoon, she said she had been here like 50 times before, it was interesting getting a Swedish perspective on things

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Stockholm City Hall tour – we went here on recommendation and were not disappointed. The architecture is interesting and this is where the Nobel prize dinner is held every year.

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Drottningholm Palace -  Private residence of the Swedish royal family with surrounding buildings and gardens.

An 18th century theatre, original sets and 200 year old stage machinery which they use currently for opera performances. No photos allowed inside anywhere.

Once again someone must have visited Versailles and decided they wanted to try and copy the garden.

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Our feet were sore and we felt like we needed to go on a holiday after our time in Copenhagen and Stockholm.

We purchased a Stockholm card which gave us 3 days of sight seeing and public transport. Here is a number of activities we did while in Stockholm.  There will be two parts to this post…

We took a one hour boat cruise through Stockholm's canals which helped orientate us to the layout of the many island’s that make up Stockholm.

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Vasa Museum – amazing museum which has a reconstructed ship that sunk in 1628 twenty minutes into its first voyage - not even making it out of the harbor. Basically a strong gust of wind caused the ship to lean over far enough that the gun doors went under water which flooded the ship causing it to lean further which caused the ballast to move which made it lean further and further taking in more water until it capsized.

It was one of the biggest ships at the time with a number of major design flaws and problems:

• there were no actual design blueprints. It was in someone’s head.
• it is four storey's tall but not wide enough making it top heavy
• the Swedish needed the skills of Danish shipbuilders, but they didn’t get along. So…
• the Danish built one side and the Swedish the other side of the ship
• at the time Denmark and Sweden used different systems of measurement which
• resulted in the ship being asymmetrical and
• one side heavier than the other due to different construction techniques.
• it failed the stability ‘rock test’ – 30 men would run from side to side on the deck to try and roll the ship
• normally a ship would need to still be upright after 9 runs back and forward to pass
• Vasa was unstable after four runs
• no one was brave enough to tell the King the design needed changing which would delay the project
• the ballast (rocks in the bottom of the hull to keep the ship upright) was not packed properly or securely so once the ship started leaning the ballast moved making it lean over further and further
• the canon doors on the lower gun deck were too close to the waterline
• the doors were open on the maiden voyage

Not surprising it sunk really with a list of issues like this... what could possibly go wrong.

Gröna Lund – Stockholm’s 130 year old amusement park. Lot’s of people were walking around with giant 2kg chocolate bars they had won at the games

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Bike ride on Djurgården – Stockholm has a large park which is owned by the royal family and used to be a royal hunting ground. It took about 1-2 hour to ride a bike around the island.

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More to come….

Travelled from Copenhagen to Stockholm today. While it went about 200Km/hr it wasn’t all that smooth as we saw quite a few people fall into someone’s lap due to the train jolting them off their feet while walking down the carriage. Along with the sliding doors that kept popping open and wheeled suitcases rolling across the floor.

Crossing the water into Sweden was interesting. The train line and road goes through a tunnel part way across, pops up on Peberholm Island then continues on the Øresund Bridge connecting Denmark with Sweden.

Øresund Bridge

The 5 hour journey (600km) was a pretty scenic trip passing many lakes, rivers, forests and red farm houses. The multiple Copenhagen blog posts were produced in this time!

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Price are bit hard to read:

92 – 11.72Kr/L = $1.87/L

95 – 11.75Kr/L = $1.87/L

Diesel – 103.7Kr/L = $1.66/L

Today we visited:

Christiana – a colourful counterculture squatters’ colony.

Christiania has 600 adults and 200 children living there. In 1971 the original 700 people established squatters rights in an abandoned military barracks in the city. Locals build their homes but don't own the land, there is no buying or selling of property. When somebody moves out, the community decides who will be invited in to replace that person. 1/3 of the people work on the outside a 1/3 works on the inside and a 1/3 does not work much at all.

Drug screening is done (not sure who by) the community decided they do not want any hard drugs being used. Random screening is done and if the person is positive they are excluded for 3 months and can have a second chance, if they test positive a 2nd time they are excluded permanently.  Our guide book described people who live here as idealists, hippies, non-materialists, happy children and potheads

• Rosenberg Castle – King Christians IV’s summer residence

• Our Saviour’s Church – climbed the spiral spire to the top.

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• National Museum

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