Stockholm Day One

Welcome to the Hotel Rival, owned by Benny of ABBA. Yep. Judging by Hillary's reaction, this hotel was great. All red inside and a beautiful sunny park across the street. Speaking of sun, it hardly ever sets in Stockholm during June. So match that with our unwillingness to sleep and you have a spark and a powderkeg. We loved this place.

This is the big amusement park in Sweden. Grona Lund. Located on one of the 4 million islands in the Archipelago. We jumped an 8 minute ferry to get to this island to see two museums, which you'll see shortly. I took 65 pictures of kids happily enjoying these rides. But you'll have to wait for the book "Having a Great Afternoon at Grona Lund" to be published.

This was the inside of the Nordik Museet (I think that's Museum in Swedish). Very good views of how people really lived in Sweden, to include how they dressed, adorned their rooms, set their tables, toys they played with, and doll houses. About 75 doll houses. All filled with doll house furniture and doll house people. The actual museum was an awesome building. It's designer built it specifically for the purpose of being a museum. When asked how he would fund it, he told folks he would worry about that after it was built. hhhmmmm.....

The last museum we saw on this island and a must for anyone going to Stockholm is the Vassa Museet. They pulled an old war ship out of the water 333 years after it sank. It's been meticulously rebuilt almost all from its original pieces and the story how they brought it up in the 60's is remarkable. What's not remarkable is how it sank. It fired a celebration cannon shot after sailing 200 ft from it's first port, caught a wind, listed to the left, listed to the right, took in water and sank like a piece of lead. They blamed it on a bad design...too tall and too narrow. Bet someone was killed for that...