Sweden, July 31-Aug 3

Ya sure, ya betcha.  After visiting Sweden, I can see why so many Swedish immigrants settled in Minnesota, it felt like home.  Sweden is a beautiful country with many pines, water, islands, blue skies.  Stockholm itself is a wonderful city with many museums, parks and historical areas.  We had a great time, saw a lot, though we did not make it to the worlds largest Ikea, but we did eat a lot of great Swedish meatballs.

The first day we visited the Vassa museum, home to this awesomely big wooden ship from the 1600's that sank twenty minutes into its maiden voyage because of a poor design.  Oops.   That evening I enjoyed a dinner in the Old Town with some friends/colleagues.

Can you find Liam and Shannon?

Day two we visited a Pippi Longstocking Children's museum with some friends.  The kids loved it, especially after Russia where they couldn't touch anything, here they could touch everything.  Later in the day we went on an SAS trip to the ABBA museum and an ice bar.  Shannon loves Mama Mia, so she had a blast (we all did).  It was a very well done museum where you got to sing along and interact with full sized holograms. Afterward, we visited an ice bar where we donned fur lined ponchos and headed into a bar made out of ice-walls, bar, seats and glasses.  The adults received a vodka drink, the kids a juice.

They are recreating the flipper dancing scene from Mama Mia (Lay All Your Love On Me)

Shannon in the ice bar

Day three we took it easy on the ship and went on a short trip to visit the summer palace where the Swedish royal family resides.  They had lovely gardens and we enjoyed the ferry ride back into town.  I went out for mussels in the evening.  Yum!

Day four we went exploring on our own into Old Town, a very beautiful area, saw the changing of the guard at the city royal palace and did our souvenir shopping.  Shannon was excited that she got to have a sushi lunch.  I think it was actually less expensive than at home.  Afterward we visited an open air Swedish folk museum called Skansen and following that we joined up with some folks at a lovely garden area outside the folk museum.  We walked a lot that day, we are all getting stronger, even Grandma Alice!

Old Town