A rare second day in the same port, and we decided not to book an excursion. Rather, we chose to make the 45 minute walk from the pier over to the old city on Gamla stan and spend some time exploring its charming streets, plazas and buildings. Yes, we were here on our tour yesterday and hit a lot of the highlights, but it seemed rushed and missed some worthwhile sites we wanted to see. I think we made a good choice, and visited some places like the Royal Palace that weren’t on yesterday’s itinerary.
We also had time to stop in a pastry shop for fika. Fika is a very Swedish custom that loosely translates as coffee break, but while not formal, it’s done with intent and is more important than we would consider its US counterpart to be. Whatever you want to call it, it gave us a lovely opportunity to take a break and enjoy a delicious Swedish pastry.
Probably the biggest thing we saw today that we missed yesterday was the Royal Palace, and I do mean biggest. The Palace may only rank as the world’s 23rd largest palace, but the Swedes claim it’s the world’s largest palace still in continuous use for its original purpose, meaning the king lives there. I don’t know if it’s the largest or not, but the Swedes seem like nice people and I’ll take their word for it.
There really isn’t a lot else to say about our walk to the old city. We explored several streets we missed yesterday, did a little souvenir shopping, and hiked back to the ship. Other than being a little footsore after putting something like 13,000 steps on my pedometer, I thought it was the perfect way to spend our second day in Stockholm. Also, we got back in plenty of time to get cleaned up for dinner and watch the sail-away. I mentioned yesterday that sailing through the Stockholm archipelago is special, and it really is. There’s nothing quite like it anywhere that I know of, and the best part is that it takes several hours to navigate through it, offering one pretty view after another.
That’s it for today. Tomorrow we’re in Visby, a large Swedish island here in the Baltic, and I’m especially looking forward to it because we were scheduled to stop here on our cruise 31 years ago, but were unable to get in because of high winds and seas. I’ll be back with a full report, so stay tuned.
Along the waterfront in the old city, with the National Museum in the background.
There’s a lot going on in this photo. The statue of the horse and rider and the obelisk honor former Swedish kings. The church is the Stockholm Cathedral, and the scaffolding on the right are covering the front facade of the Royal Palace.
Guard next to the entrance to the Royal Palace.
Closeup of the guard at the Royal Palace.
The back of the Royal Palace, which is not covered with scaffolding.
In the courtyard behind the Royal Palace.
You can buy royal golf balls and royal yo-yos in the Palace gift shop.
Pretty view. The Cathedral tower in the background isn’t bad either.
This is one of the iconic views of the old city. They sell everything from tee shirts to magnets with this image on them.
Outdoor seating at a cafe.
It’s Monday morning. Don’t these people have jobs? 😂😂😂
I could get used to this fika thing.
I told him his shoe is untied, and he didn’t even thank me.
Most of the Swedish kings are buried in the Riddarholm Church.
Starting back to the ship. The old city really is pretty.
Pretty view with the spire of the Riddarholm Church in the background.
Out on deck to watch the sail-away down the Stockholm archipelago.
There are thousands of islands, and many of them have summer cottages on them.
There are even inner-island ferries.
The sun was starting to go down, but it was still pretty.
I photographed this same place yesterday when we sailed in. Talk about an island retreat.
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