Europe 2017: Day #4 A Rainy Day in Stockholm

Sunday, 6 August 2017

We had been lucky on Saturday with only a couple of very light showers during the day, mainly during our walking tour of Gamla Stan in the afternoon. But Sunday was different.

The day started off wet and we experienced passing light and heavy showers throughout the day. After an exhausting day of walking (over 15,000 steps) we decided to take it a bit easier on the Sunday by visiting museums in the morning and then utilising the Stockholm Hop-On Hop-Off bus by hopping on and then not hopping off till we had done a full circuit.

First stop via a walk and the one tram-line left in Stockholm

 

Stockholm's Number 7 tram

was the Vasa Museum on the island of Djurgarden. The Vasa was a Swedish 64-gun warship that sank in 1628 only 25 minutes after setting out on her maiden voyage.  This is basically Sweden's equivalent of the English Mary Rose; both sank because their designs were faulty in that they were way too top-heavy and keeled over in the first slight gust of wind. Our tour guide told us that Sweden's King Gustavus Adolphus wanted to display Sweden's military might to the fullest, and so kept on asking for the ship to be bigger and better with more guns and more men and... This was all against the advice of the buodlers of course.  A classic example of "scope creep". I joked with Robyn that I had worked on some IT projects just like that, though she failed to see the funny side.

The museum is spectacular and the exhibits inside, with over 95% of the original ship recovered intact, is a wonder to behold.

Vasa main deck

Intricate carving near the bow, and gun port

Port side of the vessel, bow to left

Model of the original

Robyn and I spent a good couple of hours wandering around the museum and could have been there longer but the crowds were starting to build and it was hard to move without getting clobbered by selfie sticks.

The next-door Nordic Museum followed but it was always going to be hard-pressed to even get close to the Vasa, so we just moved through it - out of the rain which was by now reasonably heavy - and finished up on the Hop On - Hop Off bus.

Our luck held an hour and a half later when we finally got off the bus to clear skies. A coffee, and a walk down a main shopping street brought us back to your hotel for a rest.

Dinner was later consumed, with a beer or two to wash it down. It got really heavy just before we went out, so we only walked around the corner to a heavy metal bar.  When we arrived they were showing a video of an AC-DC song, and I had a flashback to a time in 1987 when Robyn and I walked into a bar in Liechtenstein only to be confronted by the loud speakers blaring out Joe Dolce's song "Shaddap You Face".  The wonders of Australian culture never cease to amaze.