We arrived in Stockholm today.
This was the sight from my balcony at 7:30AM this morning. We are docked outside the city so the landscape is more rural.
Few ports can claim such a beautiful approach. The ship navigates the archipelago of 24,000 islands that stretches for 80km east of Stockholm, a mix of rocky outcrops inhabited only by seabirds and islets boasting stylish wooden summer homes.
Stockholm is a city in the flush of its second youth. Since the mid-1990s, Sweden's capital has emerged from its cold, Nordic shadow to take the stage as a truly international city. What started with entry into the European Union in 1995 gained pace with the extraordinary IT boom of the late 1990s, strengthened with the Skype-led IT second wave of 2003, and solidified with the hedge-fund invasion that is still happening today as Stockholm gains even more global confidence. And despite more recent economic turmoil, Stockholm's 1 million or so inhabitants have, almost as one, realized that their city is one to rival Paris, London, New York, or any other great metropolis.
With this realization comes change. Stockholm has become a city of design, fashion, innovation, technology, and world-class food, pairing homegrown talent with an international outlook. The streets are flowing with a young and confident population keen to drink in everything the city has to offer. The glittering feeling of optimism, success, and living in the here and now is rampant in Stockholm.
Stockholm also has plenty of history. Positioned where the waters of Lake Mälaren rush into the Baltic, it’s been an important trading site and a wealthy international city for centuries. Built on 14 islands joined by bridges crossing open bays and narrow channels, Stockholm boasts the story of its history in its glorious medieval old town, grand palaces, ancient churches, sturdy edifices, public parks, and 19th-century museums—its history is soaked into the very fabric of its airy boulevards, built as a public display of trading glory.
MY EXCURSION: STOCKHOLM ON MY OWN & HOP-ON-HOP OFF TOUR
I prefer to see this city at my own pace and buy a Hop-On-Hop-Off pass which allows me to tour the entire city on one pass allowing me to get off when I want and get back on to continue sightseeing.
Here are some sights I saw on my tour . . . . . .
I visited the Vasa this afternoon. Vasa is a Swedish warship built between 1626 and 1628. The ship sank after sailing roughly 1,300 m (1,400 yd) into her maiden voyage on 10 August 1628. She fell into obscurity after most of her valuable bronze cannon were salvaged in the 17th century, until she was located again in the late 1950s in a busy shipping area in Stockholm harbor.
The ship was salvaged with a largely intact hull in 1961. She was housed in a temporary museum called Wasavarvet ("The Vasa Shipyard") until 1988 and then moved permanently to the Vasa Museum in the Royal National City Park in Stockholm. The ship is one of Sweden's most popular tourist attractions and has been seen by over 35 million visitors since 1961. Since her recovery, Vasa has become a widely recognized symbol of the Swedish Empire.
We returned to the ship around 5:30PM. Had a quiet dinner and went to bed early as we set the clocks ahead tonight. Tomorrow we sail into Helsink, Finland.
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