Sunny Stockholm

After being unwell through the night, I had vey little interest in anything.  I let Kim run the day.  We left the hostel around 1100 and ventured into a now sunny Stockholm headed for the Medieval Museum, only to find it didn’t open till 1200.

As the Central Station was nearby, we checked out how we would make the trip to the airport tomorrow.  The station comprised of metro, suburban train and intercity trains and we wanted to make sure we knew how to find our way around.  As it turned out, it was all pretty clear.

We continued to the Town Hall where we signed up for a guided tour of the inside.  It was a lovely day and some people were posing outside for wedding photos before their ceremony inside.

The Town Hall is famous for the Blue Room (which ended being just brick rather than blue), being the site of the Nobel Prze dinner (apart from the Peace prize held in Oslo).  The guide was very good telling us little details of the building and the architect’s logic behind them.  Eg. opposite the shallow stairway coming down to the main floor, there is a star on the wall … so that introverted scientists can gaze on it while walking down so they wouldn’t look too dowdy and introverted … perfect way for encouraging good deportment.

The best room was of course the Golden Room, decorated with gold mosaics similar to those used in Orthodox and Byzantine churches.  I now know how these mosaics are made; it is gold sandwich between two layers of glass.  The artist was given a very short time to finish the room and some mistakes are apparent, eg. the king’s head on the backwall was hidden by the ceiling due to a miscalculation.

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We went back to the hostel briefly and got lunch nearby.  Then we took a second shot at the Medieval Museum.  I expected just another museum with medieval artefacts but I was wrong.  This was the site of Stockholm’s medieval town discovered when excavating to build an underground carpark for the Parliament.

The photographs inside the museum seem to show quite discovery but actual ruins shown to us what quite little.

From the museum, we walked to a ferry stop where we took the boat to Hammarby where Iain and Jerry live.  We had been invited for dinner.  Unfortunately we realised on the boat that Kim had lost his travel pass but he wasn’t made to pay or issued a fine.

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After dinner and dessert (which we brought along from the supermarket), Jerry took us up a nearby hill.  He is very motivated even though he was on crutches.  We had to keep up with him on the walk and the eventual climb to the summit which served as a ski slope (complete with lifts) during winter. We made it just in time for sunset.

The elevated spot made us realise that one doesn’t need to get far out of Stockholm to be amongst the green (in summer anyway).  We returned to their apartment for a cuppa before taking the bus/metro home.  The bus suffered perhaps a suspension failure (loud bag) and everyone hopped off and continued by foot.  We missed the nearest metro station and walked to the next one to get back to Gamla Stan.

Unfortunately my tummy was still queasy after yesterday’s buffet.  And it wasn’t ready for today’s lunch or dinner.  It wasn’t bad but just very persistent.