Another new country, Sweden! We docked around 8AM in the morning to a beautiful summers day with a view of trees as opposed to the usual dockyard scenes.
In the photo below I zoomed in on what appeared to be an Alien Spacecraft. More on that later.
After breakfast we killed a little time until it was time to go to our tour bus. The tour was just a generic sight seeing of the city. I won’t bother with too much commentary, just some photos.
Above are the “tilting” buildings. Stockholm is rising about 50cm every 100 years. These buildings were built on wooden pilings reaching down to the bedrock, but due the rise in the land the wood is becoming exposed to the air and decaying, causing the buildings to tilt.
The ship above has a steel hull, but sail powered. It was built in the UK in 1888. It is now a sail training vessel in the Swedish Navy. Like the UK the ships names are prefixed with HMS.
Back to the Alien Spacecraft, it is actually the Sky View dome. I had to borrow the photo below from the internet, hence the watermark. The two tracks on the outside allow foe a glass gondola to climb to the roof. The sphere was the larges in the world at 320ft, but recently got beaten out of 1st place by Las Vegas
Some (not too good) shots from inside the gondola, including reflections!
Once back on the boat and suitably fed and watered wined, beered and cocktailed we headed to the theater to see a display of the local folk dancing.
At dinner last night we were talking to a couple who suggested we try the hop-on hop-off boat, they had just done it and said it was a good way to get a different view of the city. We decided to give it a shot, we had to be on board by 10:00 to make sure we got back to the ship for the 1330 departure. As we departed for the boat we learned that the first departure 1030.
This put a dent in our plans as we were planing to get off at the Navy museum to see the recovered wreck of the Vasa. The Vasa ws a wooden sailing ship that went on her maiden voyage (can you believe the programme just told me I should use a non-inclusive gender neutral phrase instead of maiden voyage!!!) on August 10th 1628. The Vasa sank on August 10th 1628 just 15 minutes into that maiden voyage. It ws finally recovered a few years ago and is now in the museum, evidentially one of the best preserved wrecks of that era. With the time constraint we now had we abandoned the museum visit but decided to do the boat tour.
The next dent in the trip wasn’t discovered until we got back on board, the camera had a problem, so no pictures. Most of them were repeats of yesterdays, just from a different angle.
The final nail in the coffin came as we approached the museum, there was a very ornate rowing barge moored up at the steps. The guide explained that the King had decided to take his rowing boat out, so the dock was closed. We continued on the boat and enjoyed the rest of the trip.
We left Stockholm shortly after lunch. It was a great city, plenty of old well preserved buildings, more than most European countries. This was due largely to Sweden’s neutrality during the two world wars, and consequent lack of bombing.
Like most Nordic countries, Sweden has a very good welfare system, that comes with the price of high taxes. Income Tax can be as high as 60% and their VAT is capped at 25%. In return each child is given from birth to 18 years US $132 monthly. This increases at 18 to help fund them through University, tuition is free but accommodation, food and books have to be paid for. Parents get 480 days maternity leave, split between them paid at 80% wages except for the last 100 days which are paid at 100%. Minimum vacations are 5 weeks a year fully paid.
Religion does not play a big part in the lifestyle with only 8% regularly attending church.
Again, lie the other Nordic countries, the people are happy and content with their way of life.
A couple of final pictures as we make our way out through the Stockholm archipeligo.
We’re now on our way to the island of Visby.