Day 19 - Monday May 8, 2017 - Stockholm
It’s Monday and the Nobel Museum and the Museum of Modern Art are closed today – poor planning on my part. However, the Vasa Museum and the Royal Palace are open, so off we go.
It’s cold out this morning. I mean really cold. The fact that Stockholm is surrounded by water may give it a certain allure but when the temperature drops and the wind whips off that water, it’s cold. The 30 minute walk to the Vasa Museum would be pleasant on a nice day but is a bit of an ordeal today. My half-hearted efforts to understand the public transit system have come to nought; a very slick website but it’s hard to figure out how to actually get anywhere. The Tunnelbana (metro) may be great but the station on Gamla Stan is on the other side of the island and it doesn’t go where we want to go. There are buses but it’s not clear how to figure out which ones go where and the #7 tram (and it’s not clear if there are other trams) starts from the city centre so we’d have to get there first. Kyoto and Helsinki were far easier than this. We’ll just walk.
Half way there, we spot a cafe/restaurant across the street so time for a coffee. It is, of course, close to a bus/tram stop for the # 7 tram (and various buses). No matter; there’s no ticket machine at the stop and, even if we could, finding somewhere to get a prepaid ‘Access’ card for one journey is more trouble than it’s worth so we walk the rest of the way.
We arrive at the Vasa Museum about 9.50 am and join the queue outside. Needless to say, about five minutes before the 10 am opening, various tour buses turn up and disgorge their passengers. When the doors finally open, the tour groups all head in while the rest of us shuffle forward. One ticket desk for the tour groups (all of whom make it inside pronto) and one for the rest of us. The line moves at a snail’s pace. Eventually, at 10.17 we manage to buy a ticket.
We are coming to despise the tour groups. They are constantly in the way, push and shove past you, have no spatial awareness of other people around them and are invariably in the way whenever you try to read something or take a photo.
The Vasa is certainly an impressive sight. A 64 gun warship, the pride of Sweden, it promptly sank on its maiden voyage in 1628 and lay at the bottom of Stockholm harbour for 300+ years until it was raised and restored. The restoration work continues and what you see is said to be 98% original. We watch the 17 minute film (English, with Swedish sub-titles, compared with the German version with English sub-titles that was playing when we walked in). All in all, an impressive sight and an extensive museum but by noon we decide we’ve had all the old warship looking we can handle.
The walk back is slightly (but only slightly) less chilly than the walk there and we head back to Gamla Stan and the Royal Palace. We must have just missed the changing of the guard as they’re marching (or riding) off as we come around the corner. As it’s now lunch time, we meander in search of somewhere to eat and, ignoring our own rule, promptly pick a place overlooking one of the squares (which is full of tour groups). The place is fairly quiet and the meatballs with boiled potatoes and lingonberries are just what we needed. Eventually other people come in but the tour groups continue to mill around outside in the square.
Lunch over, we head to the Royal Palace. No line so we buy our not-very-cheap-at-SEK-160-each (A$24.50) tickets and head inside. It’s not clear whether the gloom that greets us is because my glasses go dark in the sunlight and haven’t adjusted yet or whether that’s just the way it is. We head up the staircase and eventually visit The Guest Apartments (where a sign helpfully explains that they drag out some furniture and put out some fresh flowers whenever anybody comes to stay) and The Royal Apartments. There are various renovations going on some some of it involves walking through a building site. The lighting is generally very subdued as the curtains are drawn – presumably to help protect the contents – but there’s no problem with flash photography, which seems odd. As usual, we spend a fair amount of time dodging the tour groups, although we do manage to catch the Palace’s answer to Versaille’s Hall of Mirrors when there’s no one else in it. Later, there’s a bench seat so we take the opportunity to sit down for a moment, only to have a tour group come and stand right in front of us while their tour guide takes five minutes to harangue them in what sounds like Russian. The Palace has 700 rooms and, as we finish our tour of The Royal Apartments, I can’t help wondering what the real Royal Apartments look like. King Carl XVI Gustaf does actually live here – are his Apartments like this or are they more cutting-edge Scandinavian design (with a bit of Ikea thrown in)?
Having finished our tour, we wander down to Coop Nara to do a bit of shopping for supper and for breakfast tomorrow and then slowly make our way back to the apartment.