We started our day by going to the Olympic Stadium of 1912. This had a double purpose. 1. It is an Olympic Stadium. 2. The 2015 Stockholm Marathon starts and finishes here.
We were able to explore the stadium and go on the track and oval for no cost. The stadium looks just like it would have in 1912 I expect.
We then watched the start of the marathon. There were over 23,000 competitors.
We headed towards the lovely island of Djurgarden, officially, Kungliga Djurgården (Swedish: "The (Royal) Game Park") is an island in central Stockholm. Djurgården is home to historical buildings and monuments, museums, galleries, the amusement park Gröna Lund, the open air museum Skansen, yacht harbours, and extensive stretches of forest and meadows.
We had to wait for the marathon to pass before we could cross to Djurgarden. Unfortunately it began to rain as we arrived. Our first stop was the ABBA Museum. This was a fun, interactive and informative museum dedicated to ABBA. If you come to Stockholm, it should be very high on list of things to do. We spent an hour longer than we had planned.
We needed to buy ponchos as the rain had set in for the afternoon. Not as many photos today either! Next stop was the Vasa Museum. This museum displays the only almost fully intact 17th century ship that has ever been salvaged, the 64-gun warship Vasa that sank on her maiden voyage in 1628.
Not to be put off by the weather, we went for a walk around the island. Not surprisingly there were few people walking but plenty of ducks.
The highlight of the day, was visiting Karen Brown (an ex student from Rosebud, late 1980s, her sisters are Jodie and Nicole) and her family. Karen's mother, Jill was also there on her annual visit from Rosebud.
They live on a boat moored on the island of Djurgarden. Karen and her husband run a luxury cruise business, Karen is the chef. When we arrived, Karen was still working, so Jill and Karen's youngest, Charlie (11y.o.) entertained us. Charlie greeted us wearing his Collingwood jumper. I knew right then it was going to be a good night. Andy went and a kick of a footy with Charlie in the nearby park.
Karen arrived home with dinner. We had a lovely Swedish Sandwhich cake and salad and drinks, the same food the guests get on the luxury cruise. To give you an idea of how high class these cruises are, the guests in the past have included rock stars, pop divas (Lady Gaga) and even Benny from ABBA.
We had a great evening. Our intention was to stay for a short time, but a few lovely reds later and we were looking at midnight down in the eye. We had about a 4 km walk back to our hotel, but Charlie (the 11 y.o.) then took us across the harbour in family dinghy ( like a small zodiac we see the life savers use). This was brilliant!
As I write this blog, I still can't believe how lucky we have been in our travels. Even though we had our worse day weather-wise but probably the best day overall.
Cheers,
A & K.
Good to see you going to other things than churches but I only got 7 lines out of day 2 in Stockholm. Would like to hear more about that fantastic day.
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