Part 1.
This time Glenna and I had a hard time settling on where we would go for our next trip. We had long planned on Uzbekistan and had to abandon it because of the pandemic and schedules. We revived the idea even though it would be summer with temperatures regularly over 100 degrees. I thought I could do it. After experiencing high 70’s on this trip, I thought to myself, what in the world were you thinking? It was Glenna who said that would be too much, thankfully.
The next thought from Glenna was Indonesia and from me was Ecuador and the Galapagos Islands. Glenna didn’t have a good reason not to go to my choice but kept bringing up Indonesia which I thought would be too similar to the Southeast Asian countries we had already visited. Finally she said what about Europe? We settled on Sweden and Poland, two countries we hadn’t been to, knowing that with only 9 days on the ground we’d be leaving a lot out.
At least mostly on the ground. We actually took 6 flights with 5 different airlines—and this in the year of thousands of delays and cancellations. That did give me pause, but except for one train trip from Stockholm to Lund, the other trips would just have taken too long by train or ferry. We were really lucky. The only problem we had was that on our return the FinnAir flight to JFK sat on the tarmac long enough that we missed our connecting flight on American to Charlotte and had to stay over for a day. We turned that lemon into lemonade.
Friday-Saturday. We met in Charlotte for our early afternoon flight to JFK. I had heard that parking at CLT was an issue so I made reservations to park in the daily parking building which worked out really well. That way we were guaranteed a space. We generally take only carry-on bags but usually check them for the overseas part of our trip since one bag is typically free. But this year there was just too big a chance that the bags wouldn’t get there, so we kept them with us. I slept on the first flight and after a two hour layover and an indifferent dinner on the plane I tried to sleep again. I have discovered that it really is a good idea to wear an eye mask to keep out the light. I guess I got a reasonable amount of sleep—enough to get through the entire next day.
We easily got through customs in Stockholm ARN the next morning, and Glenna got her first stamp in her new passport which only came a few days before we left (another worry besides the air travel). We found the ticket machine for the Arlandia Express, the train that takes you to Centralan, the central train station, and were very soon on our way. We weren’t going to see much countryside on this trip, so I paid attention on the ride. We passed by some forests and then some industry and then highrise housing on the outskirts of Stockholm.
At Centralan we found the Tunnbelbana (T-Bann), their subway system, and got a 72-hour pass which allowed us to ride on trains, buses, and trams by just tapping the pass. My pass was cheaper than Glenna’s, and this was true for almost all tourist sites also. The ticket was labelled pensioners, but everyone called it seniors—they’ve just adopted our term, I think.
The T-Bann was very efficient and easy to figure out. As in other cities, the routes are labelled with the name of the last stop so that you can easily figure out which direction to go. The stop for our hotel was only two away from Centralan which made it very convenient (of course, we deliberately choose convenient places to stay). We knew the room wouldn’t be ready that early; we just wanted to drop our bags and take off. It took us forever to get there because we unknowingly went out the wrong door from the T-Bann station. We climbed and climbed and then finally went back down and eventually found the hotel—the GPS wasn’t guiding us very well. We found out that we were only about 3 minutes from the station if you go out the right door.
Two asides before I go on: Stockholm is built on 14 islands (the Stockholm archipelago has 30,000 islands) where Lake Malaren meets the Baltic Sea. We soon noticed that it is quite hilly which might seem odd but isn’t if you consider the following. Years ago I visited the National Archives where they had a huge topographical globe of earth. I was fascinated by all the mountain ranges and peaks in the oceans. Land is just what sticks up higher than the water level (and why it can change over the millennia). So islands, as the peaks, are almost guaranteed to be pointy rather than flat.
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| The Stockholm Archipelago |
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| Stockholm from the air |
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| Approaching Stockholm |
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| Getting closer |
Second aside: On our trip Glenna guided us around using the GPS on her phone. It did not use either data or phone service though we aren’t quite sure why. Verizon charges $10 for 24 hours of Internet usage, but she only used that on the last day when we were trying to locate places. So without paying we couldn’t look for a place and get directions, but we could just have the phone locator show us where we were at all times. So long as you can find what you are looking for “manually”, you can get around without cost.
Our plan for the first day was to explore Gamla Stan which is a set of three islands that were the first inhabited ones; it means Old Town. For part of the day we followed a Rick Steves walking tour to see the highlights—with plenty of detours along the way. But the first order of business was some breakfast. Sweden is noted for its kanelbulle, their delicious version of the cinnamon bun—accompanied with hot chocolate/latte (the former for me, of course). Definite yum. (This trip was not easy on the calories, but I only gained 1 pound because of all the walking we did). And, of course, Glenna found a picturesque little place to get them. Eating, for the relaxation as well as the new foods, is a highlight of any trip for us. Glenna always takes artistic pictures of her food or drink (one of her friends named any image of her holding a drink in the air against a nice backdrop as TheGlenna; it’s a hashtag on Instagram).
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Kanelbulle and cocoa
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| Alley off Stora Nygatan |
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| Stora Nygatan view |
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| Alley off Nygatan |
The first actual site that we saw was the 17th century German church (Tyska kyrkan), the first German Lutheran church outside Germany. It is centrally placed in Gamla Stan, so we kept running into it.
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| Tyska kyrkan |
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| Interior of Tyska kyrkan |
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Old sculptures at Tyska entrance
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Everywhere there were wonderful old houses, primarily 16th and 17th century, with good doors, decorative tiles on the masonry, lots of colors, nice peaks. It was fun just to explore.
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Stora Nygatan house
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Stora Nygatan view
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| Nice window on Prastgatan |
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| Ancient rune stone on corner |
Eventually we got up to the northern part of the island where the 700-year old cathedral (Storkyrkan) is. The first view was of another building partially shrouded because it’s being cleaned. That’s always disappointing. But I liked the inside—brick pillars and wooden pews with decorative endcaps. There were tombs, both in the floor and raised, an ornate royal pew, a noted silver altar and a huge candelabrum. But the highlight for me was a St George and the Dragon (and here I thought he was English), carved from oak and elk antlers in 1489. The nearby sign said: “this imposing monument provides inspiration to take up the struggle against evil—wherever it might appear.”
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Karl XIV Johans statue on Slottsbacken
with scaffolding on palace behind |
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| Obelisk on Slottsbacken |
Just off Slottsbacken is a lovely little courtyard which contains the cutest tiny (6” high) statue called the Iron Boy. We read that women knit hats and scarves for him and put them on him in the winter. People also leave food and coins for him. |
| The Iron Boy with his scarf |
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Adorable Iron Boy
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We walked on down to Stortorget, the old town’s main square. There were more wonderful old houses and the ancient town well.
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Old town well
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Stortorget view
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Stortorget doorway
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We continued to the southern end of the island.
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| Cute figures in cafe window |
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| Narrowest street in Gamla Stan |
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Another view of Tyska Kyrkan
which we continued to see |
When we reached the water, I realized we had missed something I really wanted to see across the water on the other end of the island—the Medeltidsmuseet. So back we went.
By this time we were hungry and we needed to sit down for a bit. Glenna found a deli-type restaurant where we chose seafood cream soup and a shrimp sandwich with tomato, cucumber and egg (which we found everywhere—they are clearly big on shrimp). Delicious.
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| Couldn't resist this cute British shop |
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| Shrimp salad and seafood soup |
We weren’t up for a museum, so for the rest of the afternoon we visited four of the decorated T-bann stations for which Stockholm is noted. The first was Tekniska Hogskolan which had scientific decoration since it is the stop for the Royal Institute of Technology.
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| Tekniska Hogskolan T-Bann station |
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| Tekniska Hogskolan T-Bann station |
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| Rainbow at Stadion T-Bann station |
Next was T-Centralan which was decorated in blue and white.
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| Centralan T-Bann station |
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| Centralan T-Bann station |
And last was Kungstradgarden which had lots of statutary and Roman items but also comtemporary designs. In general, I liked the way they used the variations in the rock out of which the stations were carved in the designs.
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Kungstragarden with St Jacob's
Church behind--and yes,
that's Glenna taking a flower picture |
Then it was back to the room (with some picture taking along the way) to end our very long day. 19,817 steps
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View of Gamla Stan from Sodermalm. You can see the
German spire, the shrouded cathedral and the palace |
Sunday. I slept until the alarm went off at 7:30. I’ve never liked awaking to an alarm and don’t use them unless I absolutely have to. We had a very nice buffet breakfast in the hotel; I only chose fruit, eggs, bacon, cheese and tea. There were lots of young women there and some parents—an American sports team there to play whatever. I always enjoy seeing the perfection of youthful bodies.
After finishing breakfast we were off to the lookout area of Sodermalm where you get good views of the islands north of ours. It was lots of ‘up’ to get there. I was keeping up with Glenna pretty well though I was hurting. We could see City Hall though that is as close as we got to it.
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| City Hall from Sodermalm |
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| Lots of scooters on Sodermalm |
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| Sodermalm houses |
Then back down the streets to get the ferry to Djurgarden. I made an observation that was borne out in the days there—they do not defer to age. The ferry was loaded, with some seats and lots of standing room. No one offered me a seat—and no one ever did on the trip. In the UK I am unfailingly offered a seat on public transportation. And another observation—just as in the UK last October, I was the oldest person anywhere. I don't quite understand. Of course, it is odd that I travel around the UK by myself. But we didn't see older people even with others.
Djurgarden is an island of fun and education—lots of museums and amusements. Since it was Sunday, there were loads of Swedish families which was fun to see. By the end of our time in Sweden, we had concluded that all Swedish kids are born blond. Some later have their hair turn brown and some stay blond.
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| Many yachts and boats in Stockholm |
The ferry lets you off right at the amusement park (wonder which came first) so that we had to walk through it to get anywhere else. We took the tram first to the Prins Eugen’s Waldemarsudde, an art museum in the home of Prins Eugens (1865-1967).
The path to the house led along the water where we could see loads of yachts and boats. I am convinced that everyone owns some kind of boat; they were all over.
It was a wonderful place. In fact, when we did the bests and worsts at our last dinner, I named it as my favorite museum. It wasn’t open yet when we got there, so we wandered around the wonderful gardens in front and back of the house.
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Carl Milles' Bagskytten in garden
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Cute Roomba-like lawn mower
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Flowers from the Waldemarsudde garden
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On the property is an old linseed oil mill which extracted the precious oil from the linseeds. Built in the Dutch-style, it was operated, however, with sails rather than paddles. No longer operational, it is still an eye-catching site. The property was right on the water, so we looked over to another island—and docked cruise ships of which Stockholm gets a great many in a summer. We had seen numerous groups of tourists the day before.
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| Linseed oil mill at Waldemarsudde |
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| Long view of garden and mill |
The bottom floor of the house was beautifully set up as it was when he lived there. The two upper floors were exhibit space. I especially liked the sunroom but then I am always partial to sunrooms.
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| Waldemarsudde sitting room |
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| Waldemarsudde dinning room |
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| The sunroom--my favorite room |
There were three exhibitions; I liked least the one of Ann Wolff glass. The second exhibition was works from their collection including some from the prince. I liked that one. I also quite liked the exhibit to celebrate the 100th anniversary of autonomy for the Aland Islands. An artists’ colony developed there at Onniegby in the last part of the 19th century. They focused on landscapes and portraits particularly painted ‘en plein air’ (in open air, i.e. outside). Not long before the trip I had been to the Monet exhibit at Biltmore, celebrating another artists’ colony, this one at Giverny, France at about the same time. As well as a big time art collector, the prince was himself a famous landscape painter. I agreed; I liked his works.
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| Prins Eugen's work (Solglitter Balingsta) |
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| The Boy with the Milk Bottle--just one I liked |
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| Prins Eugen's work (Lyckans templ, Ulriksdal) |
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| Vintage tram |
We took trams (including a vintage one) back to the area where we had docked and decided to go to the Viking Museum (my choice). I had started the Netflix series The Vikings before we left and wanted to explore the Viking heritage in Sweden. The museum was, as Glenna said, a little cheesy, but there was lots of information—more information than artifacts actually. The video snippets about typical people were quite good. We also took a ‘ride’ through history, a made-up story of a Viking settlement which nevertheless portrayed what life was like in the Viking age (793-1066).
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Lower left artifact looked like poop
to me--and indeed it was! |
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Model of typical Viking
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| Model of Viking dwelling |
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| Nice Viking carvings |
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| Model of Viking settlement |
We had lunch at the museum. A guidebook had given it a high rating, but it was one of our least favorite meals—salami and brie sandwich and fish and chips.
Next on the list was the Vasa Museet (museum), rated as one of the top tourist spots in Stockholm. The Vasa was a naval vessel from 1628 which sank into the mud after traveling only 1400 yards on its maiden voyage. An inquiry was done at the time to determine why it sank. An innovation for this ship was two rows of cannon. There was only room for 120 tons of ballast (they used stones) because the keel was too pointy; it needed to be flatter to hold more stones and still keep the lower row of guns above the water level. An expensive mistake! As Glenna said, imagine the artisans who saw their work sink to the bottom of the harbor. Located in the 1950’s it was salvaged in 1961 with a mostly intact hull. It took 17 years to restore in exquisite detail and with the original colors and now rests in an enormous building. It is a gorgeous vessel with highly carved and colorful ornamentation.
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Prow of Vasa
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Side of Vasa with two rows of guns
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| Elaborate carving on Vasa |
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Amazing stern of ship
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We then left the island of Djurgarden and went to Blasieholmen to the National Museum. Glenna had debated whether to do this museum or the Modern Art Museum. Because we also wanted to see a sculpture in front of the National Museum and the times of closing of the two, she picked the National Museum. In our end-of-trip review, she named that as her biggest regret. As it was, we only had 45 minutes. We took a quick trip through the 18-20th centuries. I liked seeing the Swedish furniture and design items. We saw one Rodin, The Age of Bronze, a life-size cast of a boy nude. Glenna told me an interesting story she had learned when doing the research for her lecture that opened the Columbia Museum of Art’s exhibition on Rodin in February. Rodin was accused of making a cast of a human rather than creating it, so he never again made life-size figures.
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| Rodin sculpture |
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| Per Krafft the Younger work |
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| Interesting look of 1960's Swedish TV |
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| 1960's Swedish room |
In front of the museum was a fascinating sculpture, The Arch, by Ai Weiwei, Chinese artist and activist, whose work I have seen before though I can’t remember where without painstaking looks back at my journals. Glenna photographed it from all angles. “The 12-meter-tall stainless steel structure features at its center silhouettes of two people holding one another, appearing to break through the steel bars of the cage. The artwork was created to symbolize refugee stories and is seen as an ode to freedom.”
We only wanted a light dinner (talk about eating dessert first!), but the place where we were had no soup. We walked for blocks around there looking for something to no avail. We got on the tram to Centralan and could only find a grocery store. Glenna got a savory pastry, and we shared a beer. I just ate from our supply of jerky and dried mango. That night she visited the sauna, another of her favorite things to do. I hate saunas. 18,726 steps
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| Afternoon treat at Cafe Albert |
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| I liked this Ostermalm street |
Monday. We were up early to get the T-Bann and tram to Bromma Airport (a smaller regional airport right in the city) to go to the island of Gotland off Sweden’s east coast. It is a part of Sweden but with its own distinctive culture and geography. The trip to Visby, the capital and a World Heritage site, was only 40 minutes. We easily got a coach into town, getting off on the east side and making our way to the market area. We spent a couple of hours just wandering the streets, seeing 5 evocative church ruins, churches, the domkyrkan (principal church), merchants’ houses, interesting architecture, the old town walls, the Baltic (Glenna has to put at least a hand in every body of water, preferably a foot), and—best of all—lots and lots of flowers, particularly hollyhocks.
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| Unusual color of flowers |
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Visby city gate and the first ram (more to come)
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| Just a nice house and flowers |
We started in the town square where there was a market. Glenna got three rings. We followed a walking tour we had found in the Eyewitness guidebook. The historic part of the town isn’t large, but we stopped over and over to take pictures.
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| Visby market in market square |
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| Visby house on our walk |
We first visited two churches right across the street from one another. The first was St Lars, built in the Byzantine style in the 13th century and abandoned in the Reformation. We could walk almost all the way around on an upper level which was fun. St Drotten’s was also built in the 13th century and abandoned in the Reformation. Its architecture is similar to the other churches in the town with narrower arches than those of St Lars.
The next part of interest was some really really old skeletons. One was a man buried in the fetal position about 8500 years ago. He died probably because of an arrow; fragments of a flint arrowhead were lodged in his body. The second skeleton was called Hedgehog Girl and was from 4800 years ago. She was named because hedgehog bones were laid on her chest, a phenomenon seen in other graves. Vikings cremated their dead, but when the Christians came the tradition again was to bury the bodies.
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| 8500-year old man |
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4800-year old Hedgehog Girl
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The museum used the technique used at the Viking Museum—having people tell their stories. I think that’s very effective in a history museum.
By that time we were hungry. We ate outside near the square at a restaurant noted in guidebooks; we could tell because we had to wait some time and there was a constant stream of people in and out well into the afternoon. We had creamy fish stew with aioli, creamed herring on good toast, and wonderful bread and butter (I don’t normally eat bread, but it was so tasty.) For dessert we got the saffron pancake with cream and lingenberries, one of the specialty Swedish desserts. It was really good.
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| Lunch of fish stew and creamed herring |
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| Wonderful pancake dessert |
After lunch we continued our random walk. Our focus at first was the streets of flowers. Even though the ruins and the museum and the old houses were wonderful, what I will remember Visby for is the flowers. A native told us that their soil is alkaline from the limestone as opposed to the acidic soil on the mainland where pine trees abound, and that accounted for the beautiful flora. Maybe. We saw wonderful flowers on the mainland also. But Visby was just ablaze with color. The amazing thing about particularly the hollyhocks was that they grew out of the tiniest crack. I think they are really just gorgeous weeds. There are some noted streets; the residents must get sick of all the tourists. But then they plant the flowers. The low houses usually had large sills on their windows. They inevitably had lots of animals and other decorative items on them, so I think they were fine with us looking.
We walked through the botanical garden, much touted by the guidebooks. But honestly it couldn’t hold a candle to the streets of flowers. The garden was right on the sea, so we walked on the rocky beach for some way.
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Beach on Baltic Sea
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Vegetation on beach
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| Another ram |
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| Had to get a picture with the hollyhocks |
Back in town we visited more church ruins—the octagonal Helga And from 1200, St Klemens and St Nicolai.
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| Helga And kyrka ruin |
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| Interior of S:t Klemens kyrka ruin |
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Front of S:t Nikolai kyrka ruin
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We also walked along the city walls but couldn’t find a way to get up on them though we knew you could.
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| Niche on city wall |
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| View of city walls on the way in |
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| Kruttornet tower on city wall |
Then it was time to return to the airport for our flight back to Stockholm. While we waited for the coach, I struck up a conversation with a man waiting for his bus. That was unusual. They didn’t typically engage us; I guess they were just being our stereotype of the stoical Scandinavian. Actually the service people were universally friendly and helpful and cheerful. Their word for hello is hej pronounced like our word hey—maybe that’s where we got that for our greeting that I think is rapidly overtaking hello and hi. They always would say it twice with the first one in a higher tone than the second. It had such a nice sound.
It was nice to fly over the city and see all the water and islands. Back on land we looked for a place to eat and settled on one where we had shrimp salad on toast and arctic char with creamed peas, cucumber salad and potatoes as well as wine. Wine is not always easy to find; they really are beer drinkers. Then it was back to the room to pack up and get to bed reasonably early. 16,885 steps.
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| Shrimp salad and arctic char |
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| Wooden utensils for carry-out |
Tuesday. We were up very early to catch our 6:10 train to Lund--from Centralan, of course. We had first class seats because they had cancelled our original train and thus upgraded us when we had to switch. We had lots of leg room and got a breakfast served to us--meat, cheese, tomato, lettuce, pepper on pancake, roll with butter, yogurt with granola (hooray) and tea. Accompanying the food were wooden utensils; take-out food always comes that way—and with biodegradable containers. Straws were sometimes bamboo. Along the way we saw lots of pine forests (that acidic soil) and some fields. In the towns we passed, we again saw lots of high-rise housing.
I hadn’t had enough sleep so after awhile I fell asleep. I was dreaming that I was in a big room with only a TV and the chair I was sitting in when suddenly the whole world went blue and then black and then electrical charges came out of the TV and were zapping me. I knew I was going to die. Then I became aware that Glenna was on my right side trying to help me though I didn’t know if she would be able to save me. She was on my right side—trying to wake me up because I was screaming very loudly. That was a very disturbing experience. At the time we were going through a town and there were lots of electrical wires overhead. I couldn’t help but think that these two things were related.
I had booked a hotel in Lund knowing that it was not open until 3:00. I had checked that the train station had lockers. Well, it turned out that the lockers were for bikers’ gear and tiny. We walked by the hotel just in case someone was there or there was something around that might have been able to keep our bags, but there was nothing. I couldn’t face the prospect of lugging the bags around all day, so I made a snap decision to look for another hotel. A bit extravagant, but as it turned out, the hotel room was the nicest one we had on the trip. And they had bikes to use which Glenna took advantage of that evening.
Once again we walked and walked and walked seeing cute houses and loads more flowers—again pretty hollyhocks often growing out of tiny bits of soil. So much for the limey soil being better. I guessed that Glenna probably took 300 hollyhock pictures.
Lund is a university town (when we told the man at the bus stop in Visby that we were going to Lund, he said ‘oh, the university town’.) I guess it was summer break; we didn’t see many of what looked like students. Just tourists.
Once again the domkyrka begun in 1085 was partially shrouded. Europe seems to have collectively decided it was time to clean their cathedrals in the last 20 years or so. I liked the inside of this one with its Scandinavian plainness except for another wonderful astronomical clock. Built in 1440 with nice carvings on the pew backs in the choir.
We had great pizza for lunch; it looked huge but we managed to eat it all except for some of the crust. All day we stopped in shops—paper store which Glenna is always a sucker for, bakery, and second-hand bookshops, another favorite.
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| Our margarita and salami pizzas |
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One of the university buildings
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| Just a nice street |
We spent a couple of hours at Kulturen, a really good open-air museum to which they have brought buildings from many ages from all over the area. It’s been there since 1892 and has 30 historical houses and 20 exhibitions covering the Middle Ages to the 1930’s. We saw lots of families and school groups. Everywhere we noticed how they cater to kids (and therefore, perhaps, not seniors) with lots of activities geared to them. Once I saw a father on his knees in front of his very unhappy toddler, talking to him quietly and then giving him a big hug. It made me tear up.
The first exhibition was a history of coffee, very appropriate for Sweden but not of much interest to me. Then came one on textiles. And then one on ladies’ costumes from 1700’s to today. What struck me was how we could guess the eras just based on our knowledge of British and American fashions. I hadn’t known they would be so similar. Later we saw collections of work implements and Pippi Longstocking.
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| Pre-1800 dress |
The stated goal of the museum was to showcase homes of nobles, clergy, burghers, and peasants. We saw smithies, an 8-room vicarage from 1757, a church from 1652 with a separate bell tower, a summer house, an 1850’s croft, a few middle class homes, a huge burgher’s house, an even bigger nobleman’s house and gardens along with some of them. We were impressed.
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| Botanika tradgarden purple flowers |
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| Intense color |
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Longer look at bed
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Close-up
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| Dahlias--I know the name of this one |
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More dahlias
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| Ducks and ducklings in the pond |
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Now out of the water
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After a little time back in our nice room, we found a restaurant where we could eat outside—Hungarian stew and salmon/potatoes/greens with Hollandaise-type sauce. The meal was tasty, but the best part was that 6 diners three different times broke into song. Beautiful blend of voices; obviously they were accustomed to singing together. 13,866 steps
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| Dinner of stew and salmon |
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| Mix and match candy--Glenna loved these |
Go to Part 2.
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