Chapter 11 - Day 11: Welcome to Stockholm - Improv again

June 19

This morning, we flew to Stockholm.  A rainy day rearranged our schedule as we had planned a boat trip to an island.  Instead, we walked all over town looking for a SIM card.  The NK department store was so beautiful, but closed about 30 minutes after we arrived.  Everything closed very early due to Mid-summer celebration.  Hard to imagine mid-summer at 50 and rainy. But we had a nice lunch at Cafe Linne next to our hotel and decided to do indoors stuff.

So, we went to the nearby Vasa museum, which was just amazing and took up the entire afternoon. The warship Vasa sank on her maiden voyage in Stockholm in 1628 and was salvaged in 1961. It's the only preserved 17th century ship in the world. This is what the whole ship looks like in a model. 

The entire ship fills the center of museum. Here is the front.

 The details, decorations and carvings are quite astonishing.

 These are the designs for the sculptures at the rear of the vessel.

Perhaps the most stunning part of the museum has to do with bodies that were found with the ship. Using new technology, they have been able to reconstruct not only what the people looked like, but what they ate and what injuries they may have had. This is one of the holographic images of the victims:

Walking back, we had a chance to take in the waterfront.

The architecture is charming and easy on the eyes..

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We had a relaxed dinner at Oaxen & Shippen on the water with family-style, traditional Nordic food. It is very much a boat-themed place.

We had smoked shrimp, grillled cod with yellow beets, ox sausage with zucchini and roasted carrots and a gooseberry and custard dessert.Tasted good and looks good, too!

To top off the evening, on the way back from the restaurant we spotted yet another rare boat!

Tomorrow, mid-summer festivities were to continue, unfortunately, so was the rain. The Swedes were very accepting of this, saying it often happened!