First and main thing for today was to visit the Vasa Museum, Stockholm's (and Sweden's) number one tourist attraction. We took a bus, the 69, to the bridge that crosses to the island where the museums and amusement park are.
View toward city center from Djurgards bridge.
The museum is a short walk away.
If the ship inside were complete, her masts would be that high.
This is home to the Vasa, a huge wooden warship that sank on her maiden voyage, 10 August 1628, after sailing barely a kilometer from the dock. If you are into things naval, the linked wikipedia article has lots of detail about the Vasa and her design problems. Basically, she was fatally unstable, and once she started to list, it was all over.
In the 1960s the Vasa's nearly-complete hull was raised, and up through the 1990s a lengthy process of conservation was used to stabilize the old wood. Finally she was placed in this museum where a million visitors a year meet her head on.
It's a "wow" moment.
The museum does a beautiful job of explaining the ship, the way it was built, the way it was raised and conserved. Everything is made clear with fine models,
...and dioramas, pictures, and other exhibits. There's quite a display on what has been learned from studying the skeletal remains of the 25 victims who were found in the wreck, for example, and lots of info on the vast job of constructing a ship this size with hand tools. It's a model of good museum presentation (and everything with English alongside the Swedish captions, often other languages too).
One thing that strikes the modern eye is how much effort went into decoration. The ship is covered in carvings of people, mythical creatures, and general frills and twiddles, which must have cost a ton of money and time while doing exactly zero to make it a better ship or a better weapon. Here is the coat of arms at the center of the stern:
As it is now.
As it probably looked the day she sailed.
We studied the Vasa at length,
...and although conditions were not the best for photography—it's very dark and what light there is, is very yellow—but that didn't keep us from exposing lots of pics and retaining several more than shown here. You could see more in the gallery.
From the museum we looked for lunch and opted for a fast-food kiosk nearby. Marian had fish and chips, very good, but David had the most wonderful concoction ever. Don't know the name of it, but it's a big circle of pita bread wrapped in a cone. Inside the cone is a big dollop of mashed potatoes and a delicious beefy hot-dog, garnished with bacon bits. Yum!
We hadn't completely wilted from the heat yet so continued the #69 bus route to the Kaknäs tower, a tower from which Stockholm's television signals are broadcast, which has an observation deck.
From the top there are fairly nice views, although it's a bit far out from town.
Single tower of City Hall on the right; double spire of Högalids Kyrka at the left.
We spent the afternoon as planned in the cool of the hotel, but ventured out for an 8pm concert at the church, Högalids Kyrka, that we'd scoped out yesterday.
It was an ok concert, nothing to rave about. Afterward we took the T-Bana (we are getting our money's worth out of the Stockholm card in transit fares alone) back to the middle of town to find some food. Lots of people on the streets past 10pm.
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