Day 87: Stockholm

The day's sightseeing summary:
- City Hall tower
- Skansen
- overnight boat to Helsinki

We were going to go up the city hall tower after our interior tour yesterday, but one of the super-nice assistants outside warned us the line would take a while and to come back this morning before 10am instead. Pretty city views, decent lighting, *very* loud bells! We were up there when the 10am bells went off O_o

Skansen was the original open air museum in Scandinavia. It's probably because of that that we saw so many more visitors than we saw in Oslo's or Copenhagen's. It's very big, though I'm not sure, Copenhagen's might have been bigger. But out of all three, it's also maybe feels the least genuine. Take this rest spot, for example...


We definitely had fun and probably could have spent a whole day there if we didn't have a boat to catch.


We got to see some moose up close!


And cute little piggies.

The Skansen aquarium inside the open air museum had both land and sea animals. The tank with the tortoises, chipmunks, and lizard was hilarious. The chipmunks jumped all over the tortoise and lizard, not the least bit afraid!


Ugh, lining up to check in for our boat was a mess. A huge mass became several distinct lines at almost the front, but before that, you just have to squeeze your way up and maintain your position. Eventually we did get up to the front but it was *not* a good experience.


Our room with fold-down beds.

It seemed like a lot of people were on the boat to shop! It's all duty-free, so maybe that's why. We read that some people take the overnight boat to Helsinki, spend a half-day there, and then take the next overnight boat back.


Going through the Stockholm archipelago was pretty, but it did all look sort of similar after awhile ^-^;;


Smoking kills. We should have warnings as clear as these in the U.S.

Day 86: Stockholm

It's tough to say which one's more grand, Stockholm's or Oslo's city hall. Seeing where the Nobel Prize banquet is held every year was pretty cool. Apparently 100 students (plus one guest) are chosen by lottery every year to attend the banquet. For $150 dollars per person, they get a seat at one of the outside student tables (past the columns). After buying all the dress-up accessories, some students spend about $500 for the night. Would pay to sit at one of those outside all-student tables? We wouldn't.

Vasa ship museum. This museum is devoted to the sad, sad tale about a fully-outfitted warship that didn't even make it out of the Stockholm archipelago. It tipped and sunk. The stability test (30 men running back and forth on the stern) results said that 200 tons were needed to stabilize the ship, but when it set sail, only 100 tons of balance stones were on the ship. The other 100 tons were in food provisions, which were to be picked up towards the edge of the archipelago. Too bad big gusts of wind tipped the ship before it made it there O_o I didn't really get this explanation of what they think caused the ship to sink... because wouldn't they eventually eat all the food? How would they keep it balanced then?

Harbor cruise. Added sightseeing. Rather than a person on the boat narrating, the whole cruise audio was pre-recorded in several languages. I tried listening to it in Japanese at first, but it was way too fast for me (what was I thinking??), so I switched to English.


TV Tower. Added sightseeing. The lighting was pretty bad, but I loved seeing a bird's eye view of all the water and greenery in Stockholm ^o^

Tivoli. More added sightseeing. The park was smaller than Copenhagen's and didn't have as many shows. We watched one Chinese acrobatics show (a bit odd) and then walked around. K debated going on this one roller coaster, where your feet hang off and each car is on a free-spinning axis...

...but he decided it wasn't really worth it in the end. The park had an inordinate amount of wheel games with huge candy bars as prizes...

Day 85: Stockholm

Today was city-exploration-on-foot day, with stops at a few museums. Stockholm is pretty city, with lots of water and greenery.

Parts of the city are quite cute. For example, almost every electrical box we passed was painted!



Royal Armoury Museum. My favorite parts of the museum were seeing the baby and kid wear (too cute!) and the old-style carriages.

Nordic Museum. It was mostly about Nordic fashions, traditions, and customs, though it confused me to see a Nintendo Gameboy circa 1990 on display in the toys section! We stayed a little past closing time because it started pouring rain outside. Eventually we all had to leave the museum and try to cross some *very* poorly drained roads!


Aquarium. This was one of those added-just-because-it-comes-with-the-card places. We didn't understand what the Amazon rainforest room had to do with the "aquarium" theme, but it was pretty cool. It had all the plants, water, humidity, and sound effects that one might expect in the Amazon. The actual aquarium section was "ok", but nothing to cry about. My favorite tank was probably the one with the starfish.


Dinner was simple: lettuce-wrapped meatballs and mini pancakes. I first saw these pancakes in Copenhagen. Rather than being fluffy like pancakes in the States, they have more bite to them, and they're yummy both warm and cold!

Day 84: Copenhagen => Stockholm

Today was a travel day. We took the train from Copenhagen to Stockholm (1 stop at Malmo) and now, we're finally feeling some cooler Scandinavian temperatures! Maybe the abnormally warm temps were ok after all ^-^;;

As with Oslo, we ended up getting the Stockholm card. The price for the card was the same as all the combined admissions of what was already on our itinerary, except with card now, we're already going through the card book and picking out more things that we want to see. After all, it's all the same cost =/

Our hostel here is a little funky. There's no windows! The entire hostel is one floor, in the basement. It wasn't unexpected though; I'd read about it in the reviews.

Day 83: Copenhagen

K decided to stay in today, so I explored the open air museum by myself. It was a bit out of a walk after getting off the subway, but there were signs every now and then that kept me going in the right direction.

The open air "museum" was *huge*, much bigger than the one we saw in Oslo. I didn't get to explore *all* of it, but after a while, you have a pretty good grasp of the general lifestyle that's presented. I like seeing the old style homes, how it might look if modernized cities didn't crop up, and probably how it still looks in some of the countryside. This one felt more rustic and thus slightly more genuine than Oslo's open air museum. There were a good number of animals, too -- roosters just randomly walking on the path and sheep and pigs, among other animals.

Day 82: Copenhagen

Maybe the city's laid-back feel is rubbing off on us. After another late breakfast morning (past noon!), we headed out to the spiral tower. It's a church in which the second half of the tower spirals around the outside of the building, all the way to the top where you stop and turn back around because, well, there's no where else to go!



The interior of the tower before reaching the outside portion was sort of old-looking and scary in the hopefully-this-wood-stays-together way.

I remember the first time I saw sliding glass doors in metro stations during our Southeast Asia trip. They were *so* cool! We've since seen them in other places (though not the U.S. yet). Unfortunately, after seeing enough of the world, certain things that are interesting the first time no longer surprise or delight us when we see them again. However, Copenhagen does have cool metro interiors on some of its trains -- the chairs, dim lighting, and sliding glass doors give it a futuristic look.

The late afternoon was spent exploring Christiania, an autonomous community of about 800 residents. Every once in a while the government wants to close down the community but so far the resident have managed to keep it there. It was... different.

Copenhagen reminds me a little of Amsterdam. The overall vibe feels similar and the dedicated bike lanes (and bikes) everywhere probably contribute to that feeling of similarity. But, Copenhagen seems cleaner, less crowded, and happier. It also nice that there's much fewer tourists than Amsterdam ^-^

After a brief visit to the the Little Mermaid statue (Hans Christian Anderson was a Dane and apparently in the original, the mermaid dies in the end), we headed over to Tivoli, an amusement park. It had a slightly different feel from U.S. amusement parks though. Mainly, the rides aren't necessarily the central focus for everyone. There's a fee to enter the park but then each ride costs a certain number of extra ticket coupons (sort of like boardwalks or carnival rides in the U.S.). It seems like some people just go to the park to eat and watch the shows. Some people drop by to swing dance to a live band...


We didn't go on any rides, most of which were pretty toned down in comparison to other parks we've been to. Instead, we just walked around and watched some shows, which were fairly entertaining. Like other amusement parks, there's quite a few games here and there. We saw the standard 'claw grab' a number times, but with non-standard prizes; one had some huge stuffed animals and another had an ipod shuffle among the prizes!

We waited to see the water/light show on the pond at the end of the night, but it was an utter disappointment, not even close to Disneyland's Fantasia or Singapore Sentosa's show >_<