A long weekend in Stockholm

Richard and I enjoyed a long weekend in Stockholm, which was scheduled to coincide with a meeting that he is attending now. I had never been to Sweden and so was keen to see a small chunk of it. Stockholm is nice, with lots of water, boats and a quaint old town. There are a surprisingly large number of museums to visit, which we took advantage of, courtesy of SAS who were offering free museum/public transport passes with flights.

We visited 4 museums in total, the first was about the Vasa – a boat which was built in the 17th century for Gustavus Adolphus. The warship was the biggest of its kind and took 2 years to build. In 1628 it set sail in the Baltic Sea and after 20 minutes and only 1500 m, it sank. The low salt environment and the clay preserved the vessel, such that in the 1960s it was raised in almost perfect condition (minus iron nails!). For the next 17 years it was sprayed with polyethylene glycol and then it was re-built. It is amazing. These pictures do not do it justice. If you are there, go and see it!

After the Vasa, we went to the Modern Art gallery, where we saw the Metamorphosis of Narcissus (Dali) – there were other famous things, but that was definitely the highlight. Then we went to the Nobel Museum which was about Nobel prize winners…. we were a bit tired by this point so we sat in front of a video for about an hour to have a rest!

On Sunday we went to Skansen, which is a Swedish cultural museum a little bit like Beamish in the UK. The only difference is that this museum also had a zoo and an aquariam.

There were real reindeer too.

It was a really good trip. I left Richard at the bus station and made my own way home. I got back to the car at Heathrow’s long stay car park at about 10pm. I tried to start the car and it was completely dead. I did get home with the help of Charlie the RAC man, but it was rather late.