Day #2 in Sweden: Water/Play and Ship Museum
[Photos from 12 July 2016, posted online 21 July 2016. I did manage to sort through the photos every night during the trip. Makes writing faster.]
I suck at planning vacations. I never manage to plan what to do until we’ve actually arrived where we’re going, and even then, I can only decide what we’re doing on the day we’re supposed to be doing it.
I keep telling myself this is planning!Me trying to be on vacation, but still, I can never decide if this planless-ness makes things more relaxed or more stressful!?!
But, thank goodness for TripAdvisor, my bestest planning friend in the whole entire world when we’re traveling!
One neat thing I read on TripAdvisor, is that a lot of Stockholm tourists are there on day-trips via ferries, and that most of the ferries leave by 4 pm. Thus, we were advised to show up late in the day to do our thing.
This fit our schedule nicely. Every morning the younger kids would wake up stupidly early, eat breakfast, and then be glued to screens for some three hours, while one adult sacrificed themselves to watch/sleep over them. Then we’d eat lunch, and try to keep Bjarki from going right back to the computer. Getting out of the house took a long time, but then we’d drive to do stuff, and usually get back around six or seven, at which point Finnur would whip up some dinner. After a little playtime it was the time for bed, rinse, repeat. (38 images total)
Our big destination of the day, the Vasa ship museum.
But back to the beginning! The smallish backyard had this cool playhouse, with a lot of tea-time stuff to play with.
Emma occupied herself for hours pouring water in the cups, and between the cups. Water is awesome!
The row houses opposite our house.
Tire swings. One of them had a foot-rest made from a tiny tire!
“Drive slowly, playing kids.” We got endless amusement from the fact that “lekende” sounds a lot like “lekandi” in Icelandic, aka “leaking”. So: “Drive slowly, leaking kids”, chuckle, chuckle. (Yes, yes, it could also have been “leikandi” which means playing, but that’s less funny!)
I took Bjarki and Emma out for a walk around the neighborhood, and we found this cool swing.
Funny faces after I pushed the swing hard.
A couple of houses away we found this play area…
… and a few steps further we found this one.
As we drove into the city around 3:30 pm, the expected thunder-shower hit in full force and it was hard to see outside at times!
I think a corner of the palace is visible there on the right.
Kids behaving themselves for a few seconds in the backseat. The car-gps wasn’t super-detailed so we kept getting a bit lost, resulting in tensions running high at times.
Finally, we made it to the Vasa ship museum, and it was surprisingly impressive.
Bjarki by a little display of a guy sawing someones leg off.
The neat thing about this museum is that the ship is really big, and fully decorated. It’s one of those “you have to see it with your own eyes to really appreciated it” things.
The Vasa ship sank some 20 minutes after it sailed for the first time, and was then preserved remarkably well due to happy coincidences. Nevertheless, a few places had new wood, which was a lot lighter in color than the original wood. See the splicing on the mast?
Emma jumping, while the older ones discuss important matters.
This was a battleship, and those holes were for gunners to shoot out from during close combat.
I’m guessing that a flat back-end would have been too blah?
Another overview.
A replica of the ship with sails.
This simulation game occupied the kids for a good while. In it you could change the ratio of ballast, guns, supplies, etc to make the ship more or less stable at sea.
There were no computers when the Vasa was designed.
That’s a lot of trade-offs!
Emma jumping on a replica of the mast-tops.
The stuff of nightmares!
Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.
A bunch of skeletons found with the ship were on display, along with things found with each one.
A parting shot, automatically enhanced by Google.
We stopped at the cafe before leaving, and this is the view from the cafe balcony.
Boom!
A photo of us departing. Those three masts on the building probably show the true tallness of the masts, as only the bottom portions of the masts were recovered.
Back at home base, Bjarki continued on his quest to become a hunch-back.
Meanwhile, I went hunting for where the garbage bags should go.
Pretty nifty! Except the place started to smell as the week went on…
A bag drop!
The way back to the house.
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