7 flights, 9 days

What an extraordinary trip. Scandinavia has so many wonderful aspects. The people are very friendly and the cities we visited were beautiful and clean. The countryside in Norway is breathtaking.

Even SAS (airline) made traveling by air pleasant and easy. We can't wait to go back.

We are about to board our flights home. See you for the next adventure!

Last day in Stockholm and Scandinavia

We started out the day with a hearty breakfast at the hotel.  I love the Scandinavian cooked salmon as part of the daily breakfast (Good thing they aren't pulling Santa’s Sleigh).  I was also thrilled because Stockholm serves tea!  It was difficult to find a cup of tea in Oslo, and impossible in Copenhagen.  I should have remembered the many strong coffee breaks when visiting my favorite Finnish-American relatives in Kaleva, Michigan.  

We dressed very warmly before we headed out for our 10AM tour of City Hall.  What a beautiful city!  Very pedestrian friendly, with convenient walkways and crosswalks. 

Stockholm City Hall

Grand Hall (Nobel Dinners)

It was great to have a tour of the Stockholm city hall as we learned so much.  A couple of the things that stood out were:
There are nine parties represented in the city council, one of which is a new feminist party.  Although the building is fairly new, built in the early 1900s, they found it important to keep with with historical architecture to the extent of having someone wear down the bricks in the center courtyard.  I believe it took them a year to do so as there are over 8 million bricks. The building was also representative of many different countries, i.e. Italian marble floors, Greek designs on the walls of the City Council Chamber, and French Tapestries.

The Nobel dinner for all of the winners is held in the center courtyard and the dancing takes places in this incredible room decorated with 18 million gold mosaic tiles.

I also found it interesting that the City Council regulates the schools in Stockholm, not the country of Sweden.  

Glockenspiel!!!!

Room for dining when distinguished
guests are invited to the country.

Reception Hall

The tour guide also told us that the organ pipes were the second largest in Scandinavia, but they had moved the organ to the first level because it was too loud for the organist (Charles you'll appreciate this).  They use modern technology, bluetooth, to connect to the pipes (don't ask any more questions on how this works, because we  won't be able to answer them).  

We continued on to find Tram #7.  We had a much easier time than we did locating bus #30 in Oslo.  Bought our tickets (like natives) and moved right along.  

Vasa Museum

The Vasa and Nordic museums were at the same stop (Thanks Dave for the recommendation).  The Vasa museum was packed.  The Vasa was a ship built in 1628 and was supposed to be the pride of the Swedish Navy, but because the King insisted on making it 172 ft tall and only 16 ft wide a gust of wind blew it over and sank it just 10 minutes into its maiden voyage. Sweden later pulled the ship out of the harbor and put it on display.  Just as we were thinking how clever it was of Stockholm to turn a failed voyage into a major tourist attraction, we saw that Rick Steves had said essentially the same thing in his Stockholm book.  

Nordic Museum

The Nordic museum wasn't quite as popular today, although we really enjoyed the opportunity to learn about Swedish history and see some of the folk art.  We were also interested to learn about the Sami, a group native to Scandinavia.  It was facinating to see how they herd reindeer and manage to survive in such a cold climate. And of course we stopped by the rooms with jewelry and fashion.

The Scandinavian grandfather clocks were lovely.  Good thing they didn't have any in the gift shop, or we would have had to buy and extra ticket on the plane.

This Christmas tree was decorated in a traditional winter white Swedish style popular around the turn of the 20th century.

Mom didn't quite have the energy level that I did today so we headed back to the hotel for a short rest before dinner.  Rather than rest, we decided to start packing our bags for tomorrow's flight.  We fit everything in just so and zipped up our suitcases.  

City Hall

We walked by Parliament all lit up at night, which was beautiful, on our way to Tradition, a traditional (in case you couldn't guess) Swedish restaurant.  The food was fantastic.  I had potato dumplings with pork and lingonberries and Mom had potato dumplings with mushrooms, snow pea pods and root vegetables.

Old Town

Potato Dumplings

Opera House

After we got back to the room we decided to head down for a quick dessert and cup of tea.  In her haste to pull out her flat shoes from her suitcase, Mom accidentally opened her suitcase upside down and dumped her nicely packed things onto the bed.  After a delicious dessert we spent the rest of the night repacking.

Heading home tomorrow!

Moose, Boy Scouts and Bears .... oh my!

We arrived in Stockholm this morning before 10AM.  On our way into the city, we noticed another moose fence.  Is that the sound of you asking what a moose fence is?  Well, apparently they are the hottest thing in Scandinavia.  It's a fence that goes along the highway for miles and miles to keep the bountiful moose off the expressway.  The one in Sweden isn't quite as moose friendly as the one in Norway that had tunnels and bridges allowing the moose to cross the road (yes, this is true).
Why you ask, did the moose cross the road?  Because he lives in Norway.

Stockholm is a vibrant, beautiful city.  We arrived at our hotel and immediately dropped our bags in our room and headed out to find food and the Nobel Center.  Because we loved seeing the Nobel Peace Center in Olso, we really wanted to see where it all started here in Stockholm.  After a delicious lunch at a small cafe next to the Royal Palace (no we did not try to break into this one) we let ourselves wander the busy cobblestone streets.  We ended up in front of the Stockholm Cathedral which was breathtaking partially because of its simplicity.  We went inside and were blown away.

Next we headed to our original destination, the Nobel Center.  What a cool museum.  The current winners are featured in the front and you can listen to why they won and how they were chosen. The museum also features each winner on interactive touch screens. They had a temporary exhibit in the back that was also quite neat.  It was fashion inspired by each winner. There is also a section with items from the winners: letter from Einstein to his sons, etc. My favorite part though was the area that showcased Alfred Nobel and the work that he did while he was alive.  I had no idea going into this that he helped stabilize nitroglycerin so that it could be used as dynamite.  What a fascinating man.

Nobel winners sign the bottom of their dinner chair when receiving their award.  

Einstein Letter 

Alfred Nobel Room

After the Nobel Center we headed back to the hotel to change for the Opera, Mozart's The Magic Flute at the Royal Swedish Opera.  I was planning to wear these adorable flats and stockings with cutouts but that went out the window with any hope of it going above 15 degrees today.  Thankfully Mom decided to wear her running leggings with her dress instead of her tights so I stole hers.  We were not fashionable, but we were slightly warmer.

Sarah taking a rest before the next event.

Opera House

The Opera House itself is beautiful both inside and out.  We had a great view of both the orchestra and the stage (Mom was happy).  After a lively, mostly one sided, debate on what kind of flute the gentleman in the orchestra pit was playing the opera began.  Don't worry we have creepily close up photos of the flute so that we can look it up later - hold onto your seats for that one.







The opera was different.  It was a modern adaption of the original.  We'll publish a second post on what I now believe to be the plot as I didn't really know what it was beforehand.  If you'd like brief synopsis, here goes:  Ornithologists, Voldemort?, Love, Dancing Bears, School kids, Paper airplane fight, and Boy Scouts.  I swear to you that all of these things appeared in the Opera, with maybe the exception of Voldemort.

24 Hours in Copenhagen

We arrived at our hotel in Copenhagen last night around 11pm and leave for Stockholm tomorrow morning at 8:00am leaving us just about 24 hours to see all we could see in Copenhagen.

After a quick breakfast at the hotel we headed out to see City Hall.  Unfortunately it was still closed because of the holiday, but it's a beautiful building and we got to meet Hans and a series of gargoyles along the way.  Later in the day we decided to try our luck visiting City Hall again and walked in the first open door we found (to be fair it said open and we were within normal business hours).  We were asked politely to leave, once the attendant helped us open the door to get back out.

City Hall

"Hans" Christian Anderson

Our new friend the gargoyle

We were pretty certain the National Museum was open so we headed there next for a change of luck. On a nice day it probably would have been a 5 minute walk.  When your only choice is to slowly plod along on icy cobblestones or icy marble, it's about a 15 minute walk assuming you don't have trip to the emergency room to contend with.  We very much love Copenhagen, but where's the salt?!

Who can walk on this!

The National Museum was open and ended up being the highlight of the day.  It had artifacts and stories from the very beginning of Danish history dating back about 14,500 years ago through today.  Here are some highlights:

Aurochs found preserved in a bog - we won't show you all the other weird stuff they've found in bogs

In the bronze age they believed a horse and ship helped to guide the sun along its path

Wind Chime from the Bronze Age (Inspiration for Dr. Seuss?)

Instruments from around the world

Instruments from Africa

As a temporary exhibit they showcased the history and current use of fur.  Naturally we headed straight for the dress up section...

Wolf/Seal/Beaver?

Mink?

But why?

It's all fun and games until they show you the adorable animal next to the fur coat.

After feeling really badly about our fashion show we decided to slink off to our next adventure.  We headed down the street to the Christiansborg Palace.  This is where the royal family lives, but certain areas are open to the public for tours.  

We made our way up to the castle, but once again it was closed.  As we were walking out we decided to follow a group of people that looked like they knew where they were going.  They entered a door that looked like it could have been the line to visit the castle so naturally we followed.  As we walked in the door we were once again asked to leave, less politely this time - oops.

Our next stop was Stroget street for some lunch and a bit of shopping.

On our walk we discovered this fantastic art gallery (NY Carlsberg Glyptotek) and spent the rest of the afternoon checking out their collection of French and Danish paintings and sculptures.  

They had so many Degas sculptures that they put a bunch on homemade shelves, no glass!

We headed back to the hotel for a quick dinner in the room, cheese and crackers from the grocery store, and then went to Tivoli gardens for the evening.  Tivoli is the second oldest amusement park in the world and served as inspiration for Walt Disney.  It was beautiful at night, especially with all the Christmas lights and was packed with people.  It's 21 acres cut out of the middle of Copenhagen with rides, shops, restaurants, a lake, etc.  We snacked on Belgian waffles, drank glogg, watched a light/water show to the music of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker, and hopped up and down to try to keep warm (it's about 10 degrees today).  We couldn't believe that people were still riding roller coasters and peddling in viking ships in this weather!  Great end to a great day.

Photos with Santa

Igloo? Fancy Hat?

Christmas Trees in the Light Show

Glogg

Viking ships under the roller coaster!

Belgian Waffle