June 20
Rainy midsomer continued as the city quieted with everyone gone out to the country as is traditional for this holiday.
We started off the day at Skansen. Skansen was the first open-air museum and zoo in Sweden and is located on the island Djurgården in Stockholm. It was founded in 1891 to show the way of life in different parts of Sweden before the industrial era. It is a bit like Old Salem here in North Carolina and Mystic Seaport in Connecticut, but also includes rural settings in addition to those of towns. Like open-air museums everywhere, there are old buildings, guides in costumes and bygone work being demonstrated.
We saw an early industrial shop with much belt-driven machinery.
We saw glass making.
And a pottery workshop.
You feel like you are walking in another world, like someplace on Masterpiece Theater :)
Here is a tiny rural cottage.
And look who was inside!
There were also a number of gardens and fields of crops.
And domestic animals and their homes.
One of the highlights was a beautiful old church. This was the plain and simple outside.
The inside was something else...
There was also a peaceful pond,
a windmill.
And a striking wooden "tower".
We saw an interesting school teacher's house and school "all in one". House....
and school.
The homes in Skansen are like being inside a Scandinavian folktale...the stove
the cradle....
The one-room dining room/bedroom/living room
It was a bit like being inside a series of still life paintings.
It was only appropriate that we had lunch in a very traditional Swedish restaurant just steps away from Skansen, Wardshuset Ulla Winblah.This is the outside.
And the inside...
And, most importantly, the food, traditional Swedish items like meatballs, herring and potatoes.
After lunch, we headed back to the hotel to take a boat trip to Fjäderholmarna, one of the many islands in the Stockholm Archipelago.
On the way, we saw a variety of things along the shoreline - a massive luxury yacht.
The outside of the Vasa museum building, with the masts extending out of the top.
An amusement park - the Scandinavians love these.
And lovely, traditional buildings.
And even an interesting sculpture!
Here we are on board.
This is what you see as you come in for docking.
This small island has a quirky mix of little museums and shops along a winding trail mostly along the shoreline, with scenes like this - a glass studio.
This museum exhibit included antique outboard boat motors.
This one showed how fishing nets are made.
We discovered new kinds of art :)
There was a lovely pottery studio.
With this scene behind it...
On the trail, the folks in front us found a huge land snail!
After a very relaxing afternoon, it was time to catch the ferry back.
On the way back, there was one more animal pic to grab that we missed coming out....
Dinner for this evening was set at a restaurant on an island across the inlet from our hotel. To get there, we had to go around another small island.
As we started around the water, we saw that big yacht up close.
Near one of the islands was an old sailing ship.
And another example of traditional Swedish architecture.
Not far from this building was the Contemporary Art Museum. These were some fun works on the grounds.
As I took this shot, we had an aerial visitor - check out the right top!
The restaurant was in an elegant hotel. This was the entrance.
We had a wonderful meal and caught this midsomer eve shot as we were nearly back to our hotel after 10 PM - not nearly dark yet!
No comments:
Post a Comment