The LONG Way Around the World: Goodbye Stockholm

If I had to sum up Stockholm in one word.... That would be tough. But at least one of those words would be "museum." Man do they like their museums here. Within a 10km radius there are 30 or so, ranging from your standard modern art, to a resurrected war ship, to Nordic culture, Viking life, aquarium life, terrestrial life, lives of medieval people, the lives of the royals, to tours about dead people. They have a museum dedicated to spirits (not dead people, but booz), one about children's fairy tales, an open air museum, and even one for ABBA. Yeah an entire museum dedicated to ABBA. Heck, they even turned their entire subway system in to a modern art exhibit, which, as it turns out, was probably Autumn's favorite. We only scratched the surface of what you can see, and not really being museum folks anyway, we spent most of the past couple days outside of them.

Kayaks and Sunsets
Friday's forecast was supposed to be sunny. Since Stockholm's history and livelihood is based upon the waters that make up so much of the landscape, we figured what better way than to rent some kayaks and take to the sea. It was a mostly an uneventful trip, but decidedly not sunny and warm. The trip took us in to the main waterway, which was probably a bit much for our crew. No capsizing, so success.

Beautiful wooden boats line the canal.

Taking a breather from the choppy harbor waters

Paddling with this little dude in my lap was.... difficult

Wooden vessels, from water level.

Later that evening, Nicole. Autumn and I ventured out to try and catch the sunset. Stockholm makes for a nice backdrop.

Nicole snapped this one, and said, "See, I can take artsy photos too, ya know!"

Silhouette of City Hall

Yep, very pretty.

Changing of the Guard

Sweden maintains a Royal family (which, BTW, is not made up of terribly swedish people). And with a Royal family comes Royal guards, which then means changing of said guards on a daily basis. In this case, at 12:15pm (and 1:15pm on Sundays - why the difference? The King never told me). Sweden, being famously neutral in times of war, is not known for their military prowess, and I think their ceremony brings light to that fact. I was anticipating carefully coordinated rifling flinging, straight armed funny walking, and perhaps a gun shot here or there. I assumed there would be unintelligible yelling of orders, and other displays of machismo.

As it turns out, it started with a 15 minute speech about when they started doing the ceremony, who does it, and instructions on how you can take a tour of the Royal palace and where to buy tickets (behind you in the gift store). Then, from somewhere in the distance, a marching band starts playing and enters stage left (it's a big courtyard really). It's a fine band, and one that would make me proud if I were an Alma Mater of the Swedish military. I thought, this is pretty cool, as the band played background to a bit of military marching, unintelligible yelling, and a little gun flinging. But then the military pomp stopped after 5 minutes and the band took over. And took over they did... For 30 minutes of a marching band concert! Now mind you, we're from UCLA, and I like me some good marching band (Go Bruins), so I was reasonably entertained, but frankly a little disappointed. Then it just kind of got sad (Nicole would agree) when they started playing a jaunty version of Mamma Mia (as stated above, they love ABBA). But you know what, they are one of the richest countries in the world, so maybe they have their priorities straight. Note, there was so much distraction with the band going about their routine, that the actual changing of the guards was almost unnoticeable.

Before the ceremony, some moron left their purse in the procession area. This clearly dumbfounded the peace keepers.

The drumline was pretty sweat

Subways

I mentioned in my first Stockholm post, but I shall say it again, their subway is amazing. While they are not immune to the occasional waft of urine and curious oddballs wandering the aisles, they have definitely made the experience worthwhile. Of note, 90 of the 100 stations have been turned over to artists to adorn them with murals and other artwork. It's saying something when you dedicate an entire afternoon just going from station to station to take it all in. By my assessment, it is the biggest art museum on the planet (at least in terms of square miles). Here are some pictures we gathered.