Bellarine Traveller: Sweden / Stockholm

After the Ferry crossing from Denmark to Sweden it was a long drive (about 600km) to Stockholm. The drive was on a freeway but you did drive through a lot of forests (mainly beech & silver birch trees) and a lot of farmland. The wildflowers were lovely and again there are lots of lupins growing everywhere.

Most of the farm houses and farm buildings are painted a brownish red colour with a white trim. The reason for the colour is they mix a formula into the paint and that keeps mosquitoes and other small insects away from the windows. Buildings here do not have screens on windows.

We had a lunch stop at Lake Vattern and that was lovely as the sun did come out. The restaurant overlooked the lake and it was pleasant sitting out in the sunshine and enjoying the view.

Stockholm is a magnificent city situated on 14 different islands. The harbour area is very picturesque and you do see lots of people out and about soaking up the summer days and some sunshine. The winters here are very long and dark so as soon as the sunshine comes everyone takes advantage of it.

In the evening we went up to the TV tower on the edge of the city. It is 155 metres tall and there is an elevator that takes you to the top of the tower. The view is wonderful as you can see most of Stockholm from the top.

The next morning we had an excellent sightseeing tour of the city:

§ The ‘old town’ is just lovely and the old buildings are all intact. Sweden did not take part in either WW1 or WW2.

§ The Royal Palace does have guards and a changing of the guard ceremony a couple of times each day. The Royal Palace was open if you were prepared to queue up you could go inside.

§ It was a ’flag holiday’ in Sweden, in other words a public holiday so there were plenty of people out and about and lots of street entertainers.

§ We went to the Lutheran Cathedral and this was a very ornate but beautiful cathedral. There is an amazing wooden (oak) statue there of St George and the Dragon, it has been in the cathedral since 1489.

We had an optional tour to go to the Wasa Museum. My brother had mentioned this to me and said it was well worth seeing – and how right he was!

The ship (The Wasa) is a huge wooden oak ship that was built in 1628, but after sailing for about 1300 metres it sank. In April 1961 the Wasa was finally brought to the surface after years & years of planning. There has been much preservation work done on the ship but a very high percentage of what you see is original. This is a wonderful venue and was well worth visiting.

We did have time to stroll through the old city areas before getting on an overnight ferry to Helsinki.

Sailing from the Stockholm Harbour was an incredible sight as Sweden is located on a huge archipelago and the scenery was magnificent. I did wake during the journey at 3.00am, looked out my window and it was still light!

So far the weather has been kind to us - I just hope it continues......