First Day in Stockholm

We were up by 6:30 after getting plenty of sleep. That was a relief after our long day yesterday. The breakfast buffet was a surprise. Along with all of the standard fare, we had Swedish pancakes! And that's not all. Ann sampled the breakfast herring. She said that it was good. I wouldn't know. Herring for breakfast is too bazaar for me.

We left the hotel and walked along the harbor across the Djurgården bridge and onto Djurgårdsvägen. We wandered around a little until we found the west entrance to Skansen. This is Europe's first and best open-air folk museum. We visited farms that were relocated from various geographical area of Sweden. We also saw artisan workshops, churches and schools. We ate lunch in the main square and had smoked reindeer and a lingonberry drink. On the way out, we bought some pastries from the bakery. Because this was Saturday, there were lots a families there with their young kids.


Smoked Reinder

The Nordic Museum was very close to Skansen, so we decided to make a tour of it. The exhibits that we saw are listed on the museum's web site. Some of them were worth seeing, but I zoned out in the shoes and doilies sections. After we were done, we sat outside for a few minutes and polished off most of the pastries that we bought in Skansen.

While hiking back to the hotel, we stopped at a couple of grocery stores for bananas and beer. The bananas looked good but the beer was 3.2%. It seems that you can't buy strong beer in stores but you can drink it in bars. So we bought a couple of dark Swedish beers at the hotel bar and drank them in our room. The clerk at the hotel by law had to uncap them for us.

Dinner was at the hotel buffet again. We had salads and paella. We met Linda and Kay who are on the Rick Steves tour with us and chatted with them for awhile. Then we took a stroll to a subway station to see how the T-bana works. The transit system includes the subway, buses and boats.

Bed time was before 10:00.