Caroline, Christine, and I drove into Stockholm for a day of wandering around and seeing the sights.  Despite Christine's claims of not knowing Stockholm very well at all, she got us to the Vasa Museum quickly and unscathed.

The Vasa is an old wooden sailing ship that was built for the Swedish navy.  Gustav Adolphus, the King, wanted a two deck navy ship to go after those nasty Poles who were blockading access to the Baltic back in 1638.  

Unfortunately, the Swedes had never built a ship with two gun decks before, and the king was giving them the measurements for the ship.  Also, at that time part of modern day Poland was actually a part of Sweden.  The king was in residence in that part of Sweden at the time he ordered this ship to be built.

The ship, on it's maiden voyage, with a full complement of 450 people aboard (crew and soldiers), listed to one side then the other, and then listed again so far the cannon ports were under water.  The open cannon ports quickly filled with water and a fully rigged brand new navy vessel went straight to the bottom of the sea.  The ship was designed too poorly to stay upright when loaded.  This was a serious design screw up, but it sounds like it came directly from the king, so nobody was ever convicted of anything.

Move forward to the 1950s and a Swede was looking for the old wreck, and found it.  Then  he enlisted the interest of the current king of Sweden, and a national project ensued to recover the wreck, which they did.  And it was carefully reassembled and eventually housed in the museum you see in the first picture.

The second picture shows a model of the ship in full rigging as it probably looked just before it sank.  The only difference is likely to be the fact that the aft was painted with very bright colors and gilt.  As soon as they figure out exactly how it looked back in the old days, they will paint the ship and update the model.  Stay tuned.

The third picture shows the recovered bow the Vasa.  The wood is dark from sitting in the mud and water for so long.  The reason that almost the entire ship was so well preserved was the fact that the bay where it sank was not saline enough for the wood boring worms, and nothing else bothered the hull. 

The fourth picture shows the detail of the carving on the aft hull.  Lots of figures that reference Greek gods, biblical saints, and great Swedish deeds.  Dutch and German wood carvers were brought in to complete all the carving details that cover the ship.  When this is painted and covered gilt it will be spectacular.

This Nordic Museum was located next to the Vasa Museum.  We didn't get inside, but it sure looked neat from the outside.  And it's a really huge building.  I guess this is on the list of things we need to do next time we are in town.

We took a ferry over to the old part of Stockholm to wander and have lunch.  It was a beautiful day and the water side looked great.

We had a nice lunch and then wandered the old part of town and shopped for small items to take home and enjoyed seeing the buildings of the old town.

It happened to be graduation day for all of Sweden.  All the students in the public high schools were graduating and part of that activity is driving around in the decorated trucks and honking the horn a lot.  It seemed to be good fun for all involved.  Christine was fondly remembering when she went through that ritual, just a few short years ago.  ;-)

At the end of the walk through the old town we ended up at the royal palace.  Christine and Caroline couldn't resist tormenting the guards a bit since they have to observe a strict decorum. 

We did get to see a changing of the guard.  They marched perfectly together, just like toy soldiers.

We also got a good view of the Parliament building, which Christine is pointing out, so to speak.

We continued on to the open air market in front of the concert hall.  This hall has this statue in front of it that is very famous in Sweden.  I thought it was pretty funny since none of the girls looked anything like the girls that I had seen around the place.

Caroline likes to ride the wild tigers where ever she finds them, and one popped up on this part of the trip too.

We headed back to the house for a nice home cooked dinner.  Christine is showing off her culinary talents again, and who are we to ask for anything different..?  ;-)