Thankfully whatever problem I had with the electricity in Norway was not an issue here and it was a relief to know everything was working properly and safely again. The first night I met a great guy called Thomas from Wimbledon and a lady called Lillian from southern Sweden and was kindly invited for a beer and to watch the Champions League final at one of the cabins on site.
There is a huge horserace at Solvalla Racecourse in Stockholm the next day (probably the biggest horserace in the world although barely heard of in the UK) and Lillian was a minority shareholder in one of the horses and was there to watch. She later told me that her horse did "well" without giving away any more detail than that. I visited the stadium later in the week, a huge venue with a large oval track.
For several days the students have been partying in the back of big trucks which are driving around the city, I guess either in celebration of the end of their exams or in the lead up to Swedish Independence Day.
Stockholm is effectively the capital of Scandinavia and is a large city spread out over several areas of land with bridges joining over the water in between. If you are on foot, it is hard to see everything without public transport as the main sites and attrctions are fairly evenly spread out over town.
The centre, and main tourist area, is the central "island" of Gamla Stan - the old town. It houses the parliament and castle, although now more of a palace after it was burnt to the ground, along a lot of the old churches and historic buildings.
North of the old town is the much more modern region of Norrmalm. This houses the main train station, banking sector, and most of the normal high street shopping. The island of Djurgarden is the greenest area close to the city centre with lots of parkland overlooking the water and other areas of the town.
It is about 30 minutes ride by bike from the campsite into town. I used the tourist information office to book myself a Stockholm card for 3 days (for about £65) which allows free entry to a lot of the sites and museums in the city - about 80 in total. I also got the location of the ferry terminal where I could book my ferry to Tallinn.
Having winced at the prices I found online before leaving England (around £400-£600), I was glad to book a ferry from the terminal leaving on 4th June for about £200 with an overnight cabin included. Things are falling into place nicely!
I planned to make good use of my Stockholm Card for the next few days and visit as many places as possible. The first place I went was Skansen, a huge open air museum featuring 150 recreated buildings of different points in Swedish history to create a town of sorts. Many of the shops are "open" to look around and you can buy things like blown glass and pottery.
It has pens of various native animals such as Brown Bears and European Bison, many of which have small offspring at the moment. It also features an aquarium with various other animals and you can stroll amongst the Limas, Monkeys and Meercats.
The Vasa Museum is one of the biggest draws in Stockholm and is the only surviving relic in the world of a 17th century ship. As a ship it was hugely flawed, top heavy and without enough ballast, and sank after about 1km of it's maiden voyage out of Stockholm port where it lay on the seabed for 333 years before being recovered in 1961. At the time, it was the most expensive and ornamented vessel in Sweden and was commisioned by the king to be the formost ship in the royal fleet.
It is a facinating museum built on 7 levels around the very well preserved wreck complete with lots of carved wood decoration. There is lots of extra information on ship-building as well as the crew - with recovered bodies and facial reconstructions too. Sorry that my pictures came out so dark!
The Aquaria is right next to the Vasa Museum. It is quite small but impressive, with great rainforest and swamp areas but most impressive of all is at the back where a series of small waterfalls form rapids out to the Baltic Sea. In the autumn, Sea Trout climb the stream and effectively break into the aquarium to give birth in winter and depart again in the spring.
The Tekniska Museet (Technical Museum) is a pretty good visit with plenty of exhibits from mostly Swedish designers. It also shows all the manufacturing processes evolving throughout the ages. Next door is the Sport Museum which I was quite looking forward to but was actually pretty small with very little on offer.
Nearby there is also the Kaknastornet, a 160m high TV and radio hub for the whole country. At the top is a viewing gallery and on a nice day it gives a great 360 degree view with the city on one side and the port on the other. Thankfully it was a nice day.
I had high hopes for the Arkitekturmuseet (Architure Museum) as there was a policy in place in Sweden for people to design and build their own houses which brought a series of iconic designs from the country - the museum is quite disappointing though. In the same building is the Moderna Museet, a museum for photography and modern art which has a lot more to offer.
One of my favourite places in Stockholm was the Fotografiska (Museum of Photography) currently featuring three great exhibitions. There is a retrospective exhibit of the work of Albert Watson with iconic photographs of the likes of Michael Jackson, Jack Nicholson, Kate Moss, and Mick Jagger (below). There is also the work of Jacob Fellander who uses his analogue camera, wound on manually 1cm at a time, to create images of major cities laid over the top of one another.
My personal favourite though is the work of Edward Burtynsky whose series "Oil" shows the scale of our reliance on this resource from the vast oilfields of third world countries to the consumer nature of huge modern urban centres.
Elsewhere in the city, the Music Museum is quite interesting with plenty of instruments you can try to play as well as showing how sound effects are made for films. The only information on Swedish music through the ages though is a big shrine to ABBA. The Army Museum is pretty big and housed in a grand old rennaisance building. There is nothing truly original to report though.
Likewise with the Biology Museum, which is largely filled with stuffed animals donated from rich hunters and taxidermists. It does, however, feature a mock up of the fabled "Skvader" (a mixture of hare and capercaillie supposedly spotted in rural Sweden) - I somehow doubt it.
Two of the largest museums, the National Museum and the Historica Museum are both well worth a look around to get a feel of the country without having anything truly exciting. The Gold Room of the Historica Museum is worth seeing though.
The best place to explore the history of the city should instead be around the castle with the Treasury, Armoury and Coin Cabinet all located together there. You can look around the castle itself too, although the day I visited it the majority was closed off to the public. The Armoury is particularly good and also features a lot of the old royal outfits and in the basement are housed several of the old royal carriages. The Treasury is equally impressive. Though only a small area, the crown jewels are really stunning along with plenty of other priceless items.
The Myntkabinettet (Coin Cabinet) is worth a look around but is needlessly big unless you are particularly interested in that sort of thing. It does feature the worlds biggest coin, if it can be called a coin, and the worlds first bank cheque though.
As you can see, I certainly got around the sites during my time here. On my last full day I visited the Drottningholms Slott, the royal palace, which actually houses the royal family. It is set not far from the campsite overlooking the river and you can wander around the gardens at the back for free which also contains the Chinese Paviliion - as expected, packed with asian tourists with big cameras.
I also managed to take a boat trip around some of the city for a different perspective although it re-affirmed my desire to see a place in my own way rather than be wheeled around as a tourist.
A bus turned up on the campsite with a couple of days to go, full of other travellers - mostly Americans and Aussies. The last night I joined them to sit around the camp playing guitar and chatting until late at night. Some of them will be on my ferry to Tallinn while others head west to Norway. The bus only stops about 1 or 2 days at a time so I don't know if they ever really get enough time for a true feel of the place.
There was also a guy with a converted van similar to mine, an elderly chap travelling on his own. He has a lot of similar destinations to me so maybe I will see him again on the road. In the meantime, I am heading to Tallinn, Estonia.
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