Stockholm

Most people would not drive across Sweden to spend part of a day in the capital. We are not most people. In keeping with the idea of scheduling Saturday as a day to explore our new homeland, we left Göteborg about 6:15am to start the 5 hour drive to Stockholm.

We took the southern route that led through Jönköping and Nörrköping, as well as Husquvarna, home of the sewing machine and my washer and dryer. The road led beside an enormous lake at one point. Jönköping is the home of Saab, and has models of its jet airplanes at the offramps (abfart). It's very much like driving through northern Ontario. There's one stretch that looks exactly like Hwy 11 outside of Bracebridge, divided highway with rocks and pine trees. We drove through rain most of the way.

The directions I had printed from ViaMichelin were ok until we got to the outskirts of Stockholm at which point the road signs stopped matching the instructions I was following. They were close, but not exact, which led to a lot of u-turns and retracing our steps until finally we found our way to Gamla Stan (old town).

By noon, we were walking across the bridge on the northside of the palace when we heard a marching band. It was the fresh shift of guards, coming to do the Changing of the Guard ceremony at the palace. No police fuss the way there is in London. In London, there are police and barracades. Here, 2 horses led the way, but that was all.

The palace itself is well marked. There are maps about it (you are here) all over the place. We needed food, and quickly found a perfectly nice café just around the corner. We even found a table for 4 tucked in a back corner. Andrew is into quiche these days, so he ate his quiche and I had his accompanying salad. Elizabeth had a blueberry muffin, and Peter had an enormous ham and cheese sandwich. Well sated, we went off to buy tickets and start touring around.

There are various parts to tour at Kunga Slottet. The best bet is to purchase a combination ticket, which can be used all on one day the way we intended, or over a consecutive 3 day period. The Changing of the Guard was just ending, and, remember what I said about no barracade? Well in our hurry to get from A to B, we just tucked right in behind the last of the guards like we were part of the parade, and headed off to find the Treasury.

The Treasury Vault is part museum, but mostly a store room for crowns when they aren't being worn. There is a 45minute tour in English at 1pm. It was interesting, but a lot of standing around in a small space. The Swedish Monarch stopped being coronated 3 generations ago. Apparently, the Germans stopped wearing their crowns and the Swedes followed suit. When you see King Carl XVI Gustav on state occasions, his crown is nearby, but not on his head. When Crown Princess Victoria was married in June, she wore a crown, and the royal family gave one to her husband, Prince Daniel. Princess Sofia Albertina's crown contains 600 diamonds. She picked several of them off in the late 1700s and hocked them in Germany to fund an underground movement to overthrow the government, but had to buy them back again once it was discovered what she had done. Today all 600 are back in place. The silver throne which dates from 1650 was copied for the "Batman Forever" movie. Tommy Lee Jones as Two Face sits in it.

Next stop - Royal apartments. Before the English tour at 2pm, we had a few minutes to wander through the Bernadotte apartments. Today's palace 'opened' in 1754 at which time Queen Lovisa and King Adolf Frederik used the Bernadotte space as their residence. Lots of pretty rooms, great chandeliers, and paintings. Our tour of the State apartments was crowded. Life at Kungliga Slottet closely mirrored the style of Versaille and the rooms reflect that. One magnificent chandelier weighs over 600 lbs. After that tour, we quickly walked through the Guest apartments, which are still used today. The rest of the palace is only used as offices and for state occasions like welcoming new ambassadors, dinner parties, and wedding dances. The royal family lives outside Stockholm at Drottningholm.

The palace is only open from 12 - 3, so by now, it's not only 3, but pouring. Peter volunteered to journey back to the car to collect our rainstuff, while the 3 of us prowled the gift shop. I bought a book about the palace so I would have some photos of what we had seen.

Next stop: Storkyrken, the Cathedrale. Fortunately, it's right next door, so even in our rain stuff we didn't have far to go. The main religion in Sweden is Lutheran. Special features of this church include an altar made of silver and ebony, a statue of St George slaying the dragon, and a 6 ft, 7 candle, candelabra that has been in the church for 600 years.

Just down the lane from the Cathedrale is the Nobel Museum. By now, we're all exhausted, in good spirits, but enough of touring already, so we got some pictures of the front to say we'd been there, and went to find somewhere to eat.

In the cold and the wet, one looks for comfort food. In Sweden, typical fare for such a purpose would include meatballs with mashed potato, gravy and lingonberries, and pittypanna, which is essentially hamburg & potato hash with a fried egg on top. Add in hot chocolate with whipped cream and a couple of pints, and Bob's your uncle. Next time you're in Stockholm looking for a basic, warm, welcoming, reasonably priced place to eat, stop in at Kaffé Gillet directly across the lane from the entrance to the Cathedrale. They are wired for the tourist trade, but not in an off-putting way. It was exactly what we needed - warm and cozy, good food, good atmostphere, a great end to our day.

The drive out of town was much easier than the drive in had been. For one thing, this time I had a map and could see which street led into what. We found the highway, and had an uneventful trip back. Great clouds. Sky full of stars at one point, 3/4 moon at another, more rain too.

We road trip a lot because we're good at it. We can do 13 hours in a car without complaining. It's often my favourite place to be, because as long as we're together, and have a credit card and a cell phone, we can handle anything.