Sunday, 4 June 2006

We woke up leisurely. Now, I knew that *this* morning's run would be run one of my hardest: the day after the marathon. But I gave myself permission to go pretty slowly and for only my minimum 20 minutes. All-in-all, the 21-minute run went pretty well. My legs were more tired than sore.

We went down for the breakfast buffet--we had breakfast here at the hotel every morning. Then, we walked east along the waterfront, past the Operan (the Opera, or Theatre, House), to the quay in front of the Grand Hotel. Here, we bought tickets for the 2-ish hour waterboat tour of Stockholm.

The sun was playing a bit of hide-and-seek with more clouds around compared to Friday and Saturday. And the breeze seemed a touch stronger and cooler. But it was still quite nice.

The boat tour was relaxing and informative. This particular tour goes through two locks: the first to raise us up ~1 meter (3-4') from the Baltic Sea to the freshwater Lake Mälaren; then a different lock on the way back to drop us back to the Baltic Sea. Stockholm is very pretty!

Next up, we decided to purchase tickets on the Hop-on Hop-off double-decker open-top tour bus. Now, usually we don't care for such blatant tourist things like this, but with the ticket good through Monday, we could use it again to get to any of the stops we wanted to see more of. For today, we simply stayed on and listened to the recording, took in the city sights, and made note of where we wanted to get off tomorrow. Our key goal for tomorrow: the Vasa Museum.

Once back where we started after the bus tour, it was time to hunt down lunch. Someone recommended that we go to Kungsträdgården ("King's Garden"), just a of couple blocks over. There, they were having a "Taste of Sweden" festival with food booths and live bands. However, it was also very crowded and we did not feel up to wading into the hordes of people. Instead, at the far end of the park, was a T.G.I. Friday's. Go figure. So that's where we had lunch. Also located right across from the restaurant was a tourist center so we wandered in, and checked out maps and souvenirs, but didn't buy anything.

For the rest of the day we simply wandered around on foot. On our way to the boat tour, and from the bus, we had seen a narrow street, Drottninggatan, that was draped in colorful flags, and that we learned was a pedestrian-only street full of shops and restaurants (I imagine the locals consider it a street of tourist traps :-)). We wandered up a short ways, then back, and looked for a restaurant for a light dinner. At one, "D6", the menu looked pretty good so we stopped there for dinner. Finally, we went back to the hotel for the night.

Monday, 5 June 2006

Monday morning, I headed out to do the full 5k loop for the day's run. This morning's run is actually a touch harder than yesterday's since a bit of DOMS (Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness) had set in. But the run still went just fine in the morning sunshine. I really liked this little route.

After breakfast, we find ourselves wandering back along Drottninggatan. We hadn't bought any souvenirs yet. In one tourist store, as I waited in line to pay for my items, I could tell that the lady currently being helped was American. We started chatting and I asked her where she was from. "Washington state" she said (She told me later that's how she always answers this question, otherwise, most people tend to think she's talking about Washington D.C. I tend to do the same thing for the same reason.) Where in Washington?, I asked. She hesitated for brief moment, then answered "Everson". Oh my gosh! I told her we're from Bellingham. Our two towns a 20-minute drive apart in Whatcom County. So here we all are in Stockholm, Sweden, and we meet someone from Everson. We all chatted for a few minutes and laughed at the probability.

We then walked back toward the Grand Hotel to pick up the Hop-on Hop-off bus in order to go to the Vasa Museum. Of course, we had to sit through the first part of the "tour" to get there but that was not a problem. It was relaxing and quiet on this Monday morning and for part of the trip, Bil and I were the only two on the upper deck. At the Vasa museum stop, we, well, "hopped off"!

We spent 2+ hours there. The Vasa is a warship that sank back in 1628, mere minutes after she was launched and the wind had caught her sails for the first time. A poor design resulted in a too- narrow hull that did not have enough room for the ballast required to keep her stable. In the late 1950s-early 60s, she was found, raised, and restored and put on display in the museum. If ever you're in Stockholm, go see it. It's very fascinating and interesting.

From the museum, we walked along a tree-lined street toward Skansen; along the road that we had run, twice, during the marathon. Although Skansen would have been very interesting to go into, there was the ubiquitous charge and we were a bit tired after the museum and didn't feel that we would get our money's worth. Instead, we waited the few minutes for the bus to come back so we could hop back on.

We got off the bus in Gamla Stan and found an Italian restaurant for lunch. We then walked back across the water and past our hotel and down the couple of blocks to Stockholm's City Hall. It was a very pretty building right on the water, but unfortunately, we were too late for any of the tours. We stood in line hoping to go up to the top of the tower, but after waiting, we discovered there was a charge. We had pretty much used up all of our Swedish currency in anticipation of leaving the next day so we abandoned. We should have known there would be a charge, but the sign out front didn't say anything about the cost to go up the tower. Oh well.

Instead, we decided to take the T back out to the Stadion. We hadn't taken our cameras with us for either packet pick-up or the marathon and we wanted to at least get a few photos. Unfortunately, they would not let us back inside the track but we did wander around the outside and got a few pictures.

We took the T back to our hotel for our last night in Stockholm. We've barely, barely seen much of Stockholm, much less Sweden. Perhaps someday we'll find our way back.

Tomorrow we fly to Iceland.