City Hall

City Hall, Vasa Museum, Sunday May 23

Today was cold, rainy and very windy. In other words, it was a great day to do indoor activities. The tour of Stockholm City Hall was interesting. The building is far more grand than Calgary’s, despite being built around the same time. Most notably, City Hall is known for its’ Blue Hall, which hosts the annual Nobel dinner and celebrations.

Even the Council chamber was elaborate and looked like it was designed for royalty. We both chuckled when our guide said that there is 101 members of Stockholm City Council, and that residents are not interested in Council activities because of the lengthy debates. Stockholm is larger than Calgary, with 1.9 million residents, but 101 members, that is a lot of Councillors!

In the afternoon, we ventured over to the island of Djurgarden to check out the Vasa Museum. The museum features a naval ship that sank in Stockholm harbour back in 1628. After spending 333 years at the bottom of the harbour, it was slowly recovered and restored. It was well worth standing in the long line-up in the pouring rain.

We found a grocery store today so we were about to buy a number of items for our bike trip in Norway. It’s always fun to try new things, but we had to draw the line at the salami in a squeeze tube. Well, Karen wasn’t into the idea of squeeze tube meat.

Tomorrow we fly from Stockholm to Oslo, and then onto Bodo. From Bodo we’ll take a 3 hour ferry over to the Lofoten Islands. We may not have computer access during this leg of the trip. We’ll be sure to post some of our photos when we can. Despite the cold and rainy forecast, we are really looking forward to our bike trip.