Archipelagoing
July 10th, 2016
We began our second day in Stockholm with a trip to City Hall. This is also where the Nobel banquet is held every year. It takes place in the Blue Hall, which was originally supposed to be covered in blue tile, but apparently when the architect saw the sunlight hit the red brick, he decided to change his plans so it would look that beautiful. We walked around the courtyard and attached gardens and were able to see a lot of the city from here.
We climbed to the top of the tower and got an even better view! Stockholm is made up of 14 islands and from atop we could get a clearer picture of the city. The tower also houses a small museum which held some statues and artifacts from the city.
We made our way to another island to visit Stockholm's Parliament and by the time we crossed through it we were already onto the next small island! We wandered around Parliament and the Royal Palace which is nearby. On our way towards food, we heard a marching band? Walked over to see what it was and it turned out to be the changing of the guard walking through the streets toward their posts at the palace! The unexpected is always the best part of traveling.
We grabbed lunch from a food stand, hot dogs in baguettes, and found a park to relax in for a while until our next Stockholm adventure. We grabbed a boat in the pier to take a short tour of the archipelago. There were so many tours to choose from, some taking several days, or 12 hours and decided we didn't have enough time here to loose an entire day for this tour. However, with over 30,000 islands making up the archipelago, we can see why you could spend a whole day visiting them.
We decided on one that took a few hours and took us to Vaxholm. This irony of the bigger islands and they have named themselves the "Capital of the Archipelago." It was fascinating to see all the tiny islands with houses and all the locals hanging out on the rocks enjoying the warm weather. One of the islands is a bird sanctuary and we got to see a white-tailed eagle there, which used to be near extinction but is now having a comeback.
When we got back to the city, we decided to head to dinner at Oaxen Slip, a restaurant on the dock that was delicious! We are really enjoying the food here so far, although we can't say the same for the prices. We are also shocked that Sweden is cheap compared to Norway. After dinner we walked around the city. It is crazy how many people take cruises into these cities (like us) and are only there during the day, which means at night the streets are almost empty. That combined with the fact that the sun goes down so late and the sky is always in twilight means we have been enjoying our nighttime walks whenever possible!