Tuesday 21st May Stockholm Sweden

n Before I start to tell you about our adventures today, I thought I would impart some interesting information we have learnt about the Baltic Sea. The Baltic Sea has a lower salt level than other seas and this is why it has on occasions frozen over. It is quite shallow and there are islands everywhere. I would hate to try to navigate through it. Unfortunately, it has a high pollution level, although all countries are working on improving this. It was suggested that due to the level of pollution, you should only eat fish caught in the Baltic, once a week and pregnant women should never eat fish from the Baltic. We have been blessed with the most amazing weather and the sea on most days has been like glass. Our adventures in Stockholm started with a ride around the city on the convenient Hop-on, Hop-off Bus which picked us up from the ship terminal. Stockholm is a beautiful, large city with a population of approximately 2 million. Stunning old buildings in wonderful condition line many of the streets. The city has many parks, gardens and boulevards and is spread over an archipelago of many islands.  Waterways are everywhere and there are many boats, canals, bridges etc. It took over an hour to do the first loop of the tour so we decided to “hop-off” the bus at the ABBA Museum.  All four of us had the most wonderful time exploring this interactive and brilliant museum. To see the actual costumes and all the gold records that belonged to ABBA was a great experience. The museum had an audio tour which was narrated at different stages, by all the group members. We spent about 2 hours here. After a quick bite to eat at the museum, we hopped back on a bus.  Trudy and Rob returned to the ship while Rob and I continued on the tour, stopping off at the huge and magnificent Royal Palace. We didn’t go in as we really would not have had enough time to see all there was to see inside so just walking around the outside of the palace was enough to impress us! Behind the Palace were many small cobble stone streets of the “old town”, full of beautiful old buildings, with quaint shops, museums and pubs. Again people were everywhere enjoying the streets free of vehicles. Time flew and soon it was time to hop on the bus again and return to the ship. We are looking forward to another day in this wonderful city but really think we would need a week to do it justice.


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