We had 8 hours to explore Stockholm

Our cruise ship stopped for the day in Stockholm. We put together our own ‘highlights of Stockholm’ tour.

We had some hits … and a miss

Our first and favourite stop was Stockholm City Hall

This is the Blue Hall in Stockholm City Hall

Where’s the blue? The Blue Hall is not blue.

The original plans called for the walls to be covered in blue glazed tiles, to represent the waters that surround Stockholm. But the architect liked the red bricks and abandoned the blue tiles plan. But the name ‘Blue Hall’ stuck.

If you look up while you are in the Blue Hall, you will see a vast organ with 10,000 pipes.

The Blue Hall is the venue for the greatest dinner on earth: the Nobel Prize Banquet

The Nobel Prize Banquet is held on December 10th.

This stock photo shows how dinner is served at the Nobel Prize Banquet. 1,300 guests are treated to a royal feast in the Blue Room. But there is a problem. City Hall is designed for dining in Golden Hall, one floor up from the Blue Room. Dumb waiters carry trays from the kitchen to Golden Hall, a more opulent, but smaller room that can seat only 900 people for dinner. Since a seat at the Novel Prize Banquet is the most coveted ticket in town, the organizers of the event insisted that the dinner be held in Blue Hall, thereby allowing another 400 tickets to be issued. Waiters train for weeks to carry dinner trays from the dumb waiters in Golden Hall and down a monumental staircase to Blue Hall.

The closest I will ever get to the Nobel Prize Banquet is a visit to Stockholm City Hall on any day except December 10

Alfred Nobel was born in Stockholm. He never married and had no children. He made his fortune in business. He held 355 patents, the most famous for dynamite. When his brother died, some newspapers made an error and published an obit for Alfred instead. It condemned him for inventing dynamite and titled the obit, “The Merchant of Death is Dead.” Nobel was appalled that dynamite would be his legacy. He changed his will and bequeathed his vast fortune to found the Nobel Prize.

Get your tickets to City Hall:

You cannot just wander into City Hall. You need a ticket for a guided tour. We did not book ahead. We showed up at City Hall when it opened and bought a ticket for the next English tour.

https://international.stockholm.se/the-city-hall/tours-of-the-city-hall/

This is Golden Hall in City Hall in Stockholm

Where’s the gold? Everywhere. The walls in the monumental Golden Hall are completely covered in 18 million gold tiles.

After a 4-hour dinner, guests at the Nobel Banquet walk upstairs to Golden Hall for the Nobel banquet dance.

The mosaics tell the story of Sweden’s history.

East meet West in Golden Hall

This is a close-up of Highlights of the East

This close-up is Highlights of the New World in 1921, the year the tiles were made

The Queen of Lake Mälar dominates Golden Hall

This is the Viking ship ceiling in City Hall

City Hall in Stockholm is more than the venue for the Nobel Banquet. It is where city counsellors meet. This is the ceiling in the city hall chambers. It is designed to resemble a Viking ship.

If you want to see more ship-worthy sites in Stockholm, you can visit the Vasa Museum. You can see, but not board, a fully intact 17th century warship, the Vasa, that capsized and sank on its maiden voyage.

The Vasa ship capsized and sank in Stockholm 1628. After 333 years on the sea bed the mighty warship was salvaged and the voyage could continue. Today Vasa is the world’s best preserved 17th century ship and the most visited museum in Scandinavia

https://www.vasamuseet.se/en

With only 8 hours in Stockholm, we skipped the visit to the Vasa Museum

This is the Oval Wedding Room in City Hall

The Oval Wedding Room is small and completely covered in tapestries.

If you want to get married in the Oval Wedding Room, you get 5 minutes and can invite a maximum of 15 guests

We saw more of City Hall but these rooms were the highlights for me.

Now we had only 6 hours left in Stockholm. What would we do next?

Wish we had skipped the boat tour of Stockholm

We thought a boat tour would be a good way to see the city. Stockholm is spread across 14 islands, connected by bridges and ferries. Waterways make up 30% of Stockholm. Parkland makes up another 30%.

We walked to the boat launch and lined up for tickets. There were 2 options: 50 minutes or 2 hours. Thank heavens we opted for shorter tour.

Here’s what I didn’t like about the boat tour: it was boring. We were given ear phones. We selected the English channel. We listened to a boring voice drone on about … I can’t remember.

Norman spotted the giraffe crane in the photo above. This was the only fun moment on the tour.

What could we have done instead?

ABBA MUSEUM!

Walk in. Dance out!

The website for ABBA is more fun than our boat tour. If you need a hit of ABBA, or a hit of fun, here is the link to the museum:
https://www.abbathemuseum.com/en/

There is a pop-up on the ABBA site: TAKE A CHANCE ON US

We should have taken a chance on ABBA! Next time …

We skipped the Royal Palace

The Royal Palace is right in the heart of Stockholm. I was a little palaced-out after St. Petersburg so we skipped it. Now that I am home, and looking at phots of the Royal Palace on Google images, it looks amazing, really amazing.

Next time …

We wandered around the old streets of Gamla Stan

The streets of Gamla Stan have not changed since medieval times. It was a beautiful day and we braved the crowds to wander the streets.

This is the main square in Gamla Stan

The streets are Gamla Stan are filled with shops, restaurants and bars.

With only 4 hours left in Stockholm, we had time for some souvenir shopping.

Do you remember when clogs were the height of fashion?

Those Clunky Clogs: A ’70s Trend From The Dutch And The Swedes

The wooden shoes known as clogs were essential ’70s footwear in America — even though they date back centuries, and were imported from the Netherlands via Scandinavia. The clunky sandals got a high-fashion make-over in the ’70s and hit the streets of the United States with all the power of a full-fledged fad. Everyone wore clogs — women, men, schoolgirls, top fashion models, celebrities. There was a style of clog for everyone. The chunky, clompy shoe trotted into American culture and became a mainstay of 1970s fashion.

https://groovyhistory.com/seventies-footwear-trend-was-a-scandinavian-import

If you are not going to go for the clogs, how about a traditional Swedish dress?

We bought Pippi Longstocking books for the grandkids

Swedish author Astrid Lindgren created Pippi in 1945, a red-haired, freckled girl with superhuman strength: Pippi can lift a horse one-handed. Lindgren’s manuscript was rejected by the first publisher. It was accepted by another publisher. Pippi books have been translated into 76 languages and have sold more than 5 million copies.

Time for lunch

We sat at an outdoor cafe in Gamla Stan and had a fabulous late lunch before returning to the cruise ship

With 8 hours in Stockholm, we visited City Hall and imagined what it is like to attend the Nobel banquet. We shopped and ate and would have danced our way back to the ship if we had gone to the ABBA Museum.

All in all, we had a great 8 hours in Stockholm

This is the cruise ship

The ship is 15 stories high and carried 4,000 passengers

If you don’t want to spend 8 hours in Stockholm, you can spend 8 hours on the ship at the casino, at the bars, at the pool, on the waterslides, in the restaurants.

You can get married on the cruise ship

As we left each port, we went to the open-air dock on the 15th floor to catch the sites

This is the view as we sailed out of Copenhagen

Do you like windmills or do you see them as a blight on the universe?

This is the view of a nuclear power plant as we sailed out of Warnemünde

Warnemünde, a German port on the Baltic, is one of the world’s busiest cruise ports.

We had just finished watching the Chernobyl miniseries and found the site of a nuclear reactor just a bit unnerving.

Sailing away from Stockholm is fabulous

This is an old fortress from the days when tolls were collected to sail through this stretch of the Baltic

This boat rode the waves generated by the cruise ship

These jet skis shot over the waves from the cruise ship

I loved looking at all the cottages on the islands that surround Stockholm

Do you like a traditional cottage or a modern cottage?

Would you build a cottage on a rock in the Baltic Sea?

Sailing through the Stockholm archipelago reminded me of Nova Scotia … lots of rocks trees water. Then I looked at Wikipedia and this is what is stays about Stockholm

Stockholm belongs to the Temperate deciduous forest biome, which means the climate is very similar to that of the far northeastern area of the United States and coastal Nova Scotia in Canada

However, because of Stockholm’s norther latitude, almost on the 60th parallel, further north than the Arctic tree line in Canada, daylight is long in summer and short in winter: 18 hours in summer; 6 hours in winter

It is time for the sun to set on our Baltic Cruise