Nobel Rang on Our Arrival
July 9th, 2016
Our first day in Stockholm, started out nice and early as the cruise arrived before noon. It was sunny and beautiful, which was a nice change from the cool rainy days we just had, and we were welcomed by the archipelago!
The archipelago welcoming us to Sweden
We were looking for lunch and all the restaurants we had found on yelp happened to be closed because all the shop owners seem to be on their own summer vacation. We grabbed sandwiches at a local cafe before heading to Gamla Stan, the historical old center of the city. We wandered around the cobblestone streets turning down random streets to try to avoid as much of the crowd as possible.
The Nobel Museum
We made it to the city center and decided to check out the Nobel Museum (Chuck was a tad excited about it). It is located in the old Stock Exchange building. It was a very small museum, which is why they are in the process of building at a new location soon. It was intended to be a temporary showcase for their 100th anniversary, but it was far too popular to take it down. On the ceiling, they have a rotating line of all the Nobel winners. Interestingly, it was donated by a t-shirt company which they used for drying their t-shirts in their factory.
Nobel winners throughout time, it takes 6 hours to make a full rotation.
We took a tour all about the history of the award and Alfred Nobel. We found it interesting that the economics prize is not actually a Nobel Award, but was really made for the Swedish Bank and is technically an award in “Nobel’s Honor.” We also learned that every year the new laureates come to the museum and sign the bottom of the cafe chairs, so you can ask to see a certain person and they will tell you which chair they signed and you can read the messages underneath. It was interesting to learn about how each committee goes about choosing the winners each year and how private the process is. You have to wait 50 years to find out all the information about how a specific person won the prize. As our guide was telling us some interesting facts, she was talking about Marie Currie, the first woman to win the Nobel Prize, and her picture showed up on the line above us! (remember, it takes 6 hours to make a full rotation)
