Stockholm Pictures

Photoblog

Chizzy wanted to do a photoblog of Stockholm, but she’s in Paris for a week and she never did get around to doing the other posts she promised so I’m taking a shot. Actually, there are a lot more photos from the trip (including a boat excursion to the city of Vaxholm) so she might still do one yet.

Each time we leave a location we went to visit, we promise that we will do better research before we go to the next place so we know what to do. That still didn’t happen here. Like I mentioned before, I didn’t even know Stockholm was in an archipelago until we got there. The reason I bring this up is because there are very few instances where we actually knew what we were taking pictures of so captions will be limited. This shot from the plane gives a very good idea of the geography we were in.

We do know that this particular square in Gamla Stan (the old city) that Chizzy is standing in has a rich medieval history. It was the site of the first town hall and is the location of the “Stockholm blood bath” where 100 political dissidents were beheaded and their heads were left to roll around in the mud for three days.

OK, here’s some scenery.

Lots more...

Our hotel was very Nordic. In fact, it was called Nordic Light and all the employees wore white jeans and white short sleeve T-shirts. This is the first street we found after checking into our hotel. It was a busy pedestrian shopping thoroughfare and you could find anything you wanted here. I bought the PC game Far Cry, for example.

Big tourist industry here and we saw several cruise ships out in the Baltic Sea.

We never did find out what was going on, but we happened upon some parade down the main street in the downtown area. We got there right in time to see the procession of “America Team” which included cheerleaders in red, white, and blue uniforms, a woman dressed as a box of French fries, Uncle Sam, and the Statue of Liberty. Oh, and the guy in this picture. It looks like I photoshopped this, but the guy was really just wearing a paper mask.

Then we literally walked a couple blocks down and saw this crowd of people waiting for their TGIF pager to go off letting them know their table was ready. It is hard to see, but this really was the “American Bar and Cafe” of TGIF.

More stuff.

They were big into their Viking heritage and you could find all kind of helmets and stuff. They were also big on Pippi Longstocking and you could get those dolls everywhere as well.

We really got lucky with the weather and here is how the locals took advantage of it.

Here’s a cool red building.

Sweden was a massive military power in the early 1600’s. Things have changed a bit.

Bye for now.