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Stockholm Skyline |
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As the sign says, "Open - Welcome!" We felt welcomed everywhere we went. |
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Stockholm City Hall in the background, and a line of ferries waiting to take people out to various sites in the area. We took one of these to Birka, "Birch Island", site of the first real city early in Viking times. |
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Susan getting her camera ready, on the ferry to Birka. We had read about Birka - it was a center for trading and government, and has been extensively excavated. It took about an hour or so to get there, the island is west and north of Stockholm in Lake Malaren. Unfortunately, it was rainy and cold all day, but still exciting to be at this place considered to be the first town in Sweden. |
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Map of Birka. The red areas are graveyards, the yellow is the town area, and the blue color represents fortifications of earthen berms or palisades. |
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An aerial postcard of Birka. You can see the old earthen wall of the fort in the upper middle, the town occupied the lower portion out to the water's edge. |
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This is a picture of a model of what the town looked like, based on the studies. There is not much to see there now, aside from the rock and earth berm around the fort. Since the excavations, the land has been returned to agricultural uses. |
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Drottninggatan, a busy shopping street leading away from Gamla Stan and into the newer parts of Stockholm. Lots of banks, upscale department stores, and cafes. |
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While shopping on Drottninggatan, we bought a Pippi Longstockings doll (the author of this series of children's books is Swedish) for our Gordon Setter named "Pippi Longstockings!" |
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The Stockholm card got us on all
public transportation and into all museums - it saved us a lot of money!
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Fountain in a small square just off of Drottninggatan - we arrived here on a Saturday during our wanderings and found a flea market in full swing, not much different than a flea market here in the states. |
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Sweden, as well as Finland and Norway, are well connected with cell phones and the internet. Everywhere we looked there were references to technology - even fishing boats had "dot com" internet addresses stenciled on them. |
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McDonald's is OK, but we didn't travel half-way around the world to eat at a place we can eat at in our home town! We avoided these and other fast-food places, but they looked like they were popular with the young kids. |
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This is the bridge to a small island between the mainland and Gamla Stan, on which sits the Swedish Riksdag or parliament. This spot is right at the juncture between Lake Mälaren to the right of the bridge, and the Saltsjö (salt sea, Baltic) to the left. This was a strategic junction and a big reason why Stockholm was established here in the first place. |
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The arched entryway to the courtyard behind the Riksdag. One of the best museums we saw was the medieval museum, built under a bridge to the left of this picture. Several items were found during excavation for a parking garage for the parliamentarians - part of the old city wall, a graveyard, sunken boats, building foundations, and garbage dumps. |
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Just as in any free country, here a young man is protesting the killing and eating of meat. Notice the pig has human eyes. The sign says "meat has two eyes." The other side of his poster had a picture of a cow and said "who are you going to have for dinner tonight?" |
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There were street musicians everywhere, from single horn players like this to complete bands. Nothing sounds quite like rock and roll accordion played in the subway system of Stockholm.... |
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The end of a long day. Here Susan is relaxing in our room. We like to stay in older, smaller hotels, not only because they cost les than the big chains, but because they have character. This room had 10 foot ceilings, crystal chandeliers, and a ceramic fireplace in the corner. |
