I spent Sunday touring Stockholm. We started out by going to a museum where the Swedish warship Vasa is on display. The ship sank on its maiden voyage (1628) after sailing only 2 km. Vasa was salvaged and reconstructed 333 years after its sinking. According to our tour guide, recent investigations into why it sunk show that Vasa was so top-heavy that the ship only needed to tip 6 degrees off the vertical to capsize.
We did a brief bus tour around part of Stockholm and then a walking tour of the Old Town. Stockholm is broken up by a lake and parts of Stockholm, including the Old Town, are on the many islands in the lake.
In the Old Town many of the house corners have canons embedded in the ground so that wagons making the tight corners didn't take out the corner of the house.
In the new part of Stockholm there is a mall that was built under the road. In this square was an interesting piece of art of a girl climbing into a building window.
After touring the main part of Stockholm we went to a view point. You could see a lot of the lake and watched a big cruise ship turn around. Before there was dynamite and roads were blasted into the cliff people either walked up steep staircases or took an elevator. One of these elevators still stands however, they stopped using it several years ago.
In Sweden most old houses are red with white corners and trim. At one point it was even the law to paint your house with this special red paint made with copper. This was because the paint helped to preserve the wood and t thehe government was worried about the peasants cutting down all the trees. Before this paint was used the peasants had to rebuilt their houses every few years. The white paint was a later addition so that people could find their house in the dark.
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Let me know know you prefer the pictures in one gallery or spread throughout the post. Right now I'm in Oslo, Norway so soon you will also get to hear about that.
Spread throughout the post, definitely.
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