As our collective time here winds down in Sweden, Kyle, Manon and I have sought adventures closer to home, including a recent overnight trip to Stockholm. We slept on a boat!! And fortunately, this boat (permanently docked) was on Södermalm, which allowed us the chance to explore another part of the city we had previously only seen across the bay.
Below, from Skansen. I had heard many great things about Skansen, and ultimately these reports tempted me out of my touristically misanthropic hole and we went there, but I found it claustrophobic and uninteresting (beyond being a tourist trap). The attraction consists of recreated or directly transported Swedish homes from across the country, some three hundred years old. These themselves were beautiful, but pretty odd detached from their original context. One had the feeling of being in a mildly more mossy story-land. In any event, I really like this house and am going to live in one like it one day:
The square between Riksdag and the palace (neither in this shot).
Buildings on the side of Gamla Stan that faces Södermalm.
A view of Södermalm from G:la Stan.
Gamla Stan from Södermalm
The morning view from our porthole in the cabin:
Stockholm by night - one of my favorite things to see so far. The water that separates the sections of the city allows one to see it from a distance and be in it at once, a wonderful sense of perspective and immersion. This is up to Kungsholmen, where Stadhuset stands, and the mainland of Stockholm.
Stockholm lights. Certainly all shopping streets (and more) are hung with varying kinds of lights and the blue buildings on the right are actually lit and shift color over time.
Although this Christmas tree is huge, we wouldn't have found it if, walking along the south eastern rim of Gamla Stan, I hadn't caught sight of its reflection in the window. And, although enormous Christimas trees generally don't interest me, the reflection of the lights in the windows of the building (the tree itself out of sight) was really lovely - at first there was no guessing what made the lights there and it looked like gems in the windows. Anyways, for the christmas trees out there, this tree is the tallest christmas tree in the world.
Gamla Stan at night seen from Södermalm.
Our evening view when we arrived the first day.
Strömsborg
Prästgatan in Gamla Stan.
The boat is sighted from across the water! (Kyle gestures!)
Sundry Uppsala:
Domkyrkan in the fog.
Julmarknad at Halusalen
Domkyrkan during the Julmarknad
The christmas tree in the square below my window.
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