Stockholm, Sweden (Day 2)

 Our tour this morning left at 8:30.  I guess I didn't read the description well when I booked these tours months ago because we had another walking tour of the Old Town followed by a visit inside the Royal Palace.  But it was a different guide, so we heard slightly different things.  Our bus was unusual.  It was the team bus for a local soccer team and a double-decker so we had plenty of room to stretch out.  I got some better pictures of some things this time.

Regular gas is about $8-9 per gallon here; premium is a little more than $10.

King Carl XIV

Michael looking very regal under the statue of the King.

Tiny sculpture of "Boy looking at the Moon" located in a churchyard.  People leave donations and dress him up.  The local church uses the donations for the poor.

Another interesting manhole cover

This section of the medieval old town is built on fill and is slowly sinking as seen by this window.

A better perspective of the misshapen window.

Don't remember ever seeing a TGI Fridays outside the US.  

If you look closely, you'll see a cannonball in the corner of the yellow building just below and to the right of the lamp.  And another one in the orange building between the 2 windows.  It isn't known how they got there. 

Entrance to the Royal Palace

One of the rooms where they have royal banquets.

At one time, this was the King's bedroom - or actually his "show" bedroom.  He actually slept in a smaller room behind.

A reception hall copied from the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.

The Queen's reception room also used as a ballroom.  Beautiful floors.

This tile heater was used to heat the palace rooms.  The charcoal was put into the door at the bottom.

This is just a small section of the outside.  The Palace has over 1,400 rooms; only 660 of them have windows, which is one more than Buckingham Palace, but that wasn't planned (so they say).  It was completed in 1760 after 60 years of construction.

We sailed at 2:00 pm.  It takes almost 4 hours to get out into the proper Baltic Sea and it is a beautiful sail.  Lots of green forests right down to the water's edge with beautiful summer homes and sailboats scattered around.  Stockholm is really a beautiful city, at least the parts we saw. 

 

Trivia went as usual - came in second place with 9/15.  At least we're consistent.  I went to a lecture this evening at 6:00 pm, which is an unusual time for a lecture.  That was reflected in the light turnout.  The title was "Backstage Stories from the Hollywood Stars" by Dean McFlicker.  He was rather annoying and his stories weren't much.  It seemed to be much more of a list of all the famous people he has worked with.  Ugh.

We had dinner at Compass Rose and then back to the cabin.  The entertainer is a pianist, but once we're done with dinner, we often just want to get into our comfortable clothes and hunker down.