Vasamuseet

Today we started at the Vasa Museum.  A building dedicated to a ship that was at the bottom of the ocean for 333 years before being recovered and restored.

The story of the Vasa is simple.  The king commissioned a huge, impressive boat to strike fear into the hearts of his enemies.  The Vasa was the most ornate and incredible ship of her day, and the most heavily armed.  Every statue was meaningful and painted to underscore the honor and power of the king.  She set out on her maiden voyage, made it 1000m from harbor, got knocked over by a breeze, and sunk within 3 minutes.  Fourteen people were unable to escape because it sank so quickly.  The design didn't include enough displacement to account for the height of the boat, so when the breeze buffeted the side, the gun ports began to take on water.  Quickly.  Oops.

Fortunately they decided that no one was really to blame, and after trying to salvage some pieces, they decided to let her lie there indefinitely.

Hundreds of years later, they wanted her back.  So they mounted the most impressive recovery mission of their time, pulled her up from the silt (almost completely intact), and took great care to recover the artifacts that were onboard as she set out to sea.  It's an interesting business model:  "hey, here's a cool boat that didn't work, but you can pay to come see it because we decided to bring it back up to life."  Judging by the number of people that we were there with and the statistic that it is the most visited museum in Scandinavia, I think they have gotten their monies back at least 10fold.

I enjoyed learning about the boat.  It was so incredible big.  Pictures don't really do justice.  The building (designed specifically for this purpose) was incredible as well, and hosted all the exhibits well.

After we had looked our fill and learned more than we were going to remember, it was time for lunch.  Sushi caught our eye and we enjoyed the fresh fish that we found.  Then it was time for a tour of the Riksdag and a lesson on how Swedish government works.  It was very fun to learn about the differences between the US system and the Swedish system.  They probably have too many parties right now, but they have more than two, and you bet I wish we did too.

From the Riksdag we metroed to the Stadsbiblioteket, the city library.  It's apparently one of the libraries to see.  The architecture was definitely enjoyable and it was a really interesting space to be in.  We browsed the English section while we were there, and then it was time for Fika with friends.  We met up with the Stenfors family and spent a great couple of hours talking about Stockholm, the States, Cities in general, political differences between countries, and the merits of different sweets.

The pumpkin pie slice Jonathan and I shared was delicious, but it didn't fend of hunger for long.  The evenings start to get chilly, so we dropped by the Airbnb to get jackets and then set out for the evening.

The first stop on the agenda was the Katarina elevator.  Elevator here was not literal.  We took the stairs.  The view over the city was spectacular, and the climb hurried us toward hunger.  After looking over Gamla Stan from above, we strolled over to find a restaurant where we could watch France play Germany.  I was again sad about the outcome... but it was fun to watch and the food was good albeit very americanized were we ate.

Sleep time now.  We've been on our feet a lot.  I'm ready for sleep.