(Kingston, Ontario, Canada)

Another day, another blitz of the various attractions covered by the Stockholm Card!

We started off by visiting the Vasa ship.   The Vasa was a huge, overly ornamental and excessively armed ship that was launched in Stockholm with much fanfare in 1628.  Alas, with all of the bells and whistles, the engineers failed to take certain things into consideration.  Foremost among those considerations:  would it float?  Sadly, it did not even make it out of the harbour and sunk ingloriously after a mere 20 minutes.

However, the ship was magically preserved over the centuries at the bottom of the harbour until it was rediscovered in 1956 and finally exhumed in 1961.  Some restoration was obviously required but the ship now stands proudly in its own museum in downtown Stockholm.   While the environment is strictly controlled and does not lend itself well to photography, it was still fascinating to see the 17th century version of the Titanic.  It’s much more impressive, and perplexing, when you see it in person.

Our next stop was Skansen – the “original” open-air folk museum after which many others are modelled (and sometimes even named).    Alas, we were starting to grow a little weary of museums by this time and we decided to focus on Skansen’s small zoo rather than the other elements.

We spent a fair bit of time “walking among the lemurs”:  there is a large area that you can walk through with about 20 of these odd creatures also wandering around.  They don’t harm humans but aren’t supposed to jump on your back because it could easily become a habit for them.  If they do jump on your back, a staff member will come running out and spray them with water:  the lemurs don’t like that!  It was strange to be hanging out with these creatures from Madagascar; we didn’t quite trust them but they also didn’t seem to be very dangerous.

After observing the primates for a while (they all seemed to have those nasty-looking red behinds), we visited some of the indoor enclosures.  We saw rare Cuban crocodiles there, accompanied by this text:  “Since there is an embargo from American authorities regarding Cuban goods, crocodiles born in Cuba are not allowed into the U.S.A.  They are regarded as communistic crocodiles, in the eyes of American authorities.  On the other hand, if they are born in Sweden, they are allowed [and this is] the only way for American zoos to acquire this rare crocodile.”  I wonder if this still applies, given the recent thawing in relations between Havana and Washington?  You can read more about these crocodiles here: I certainly didn’t realize that they were kept in a Russian cosmonaut’s apartment for a while!

As this was our last full day in Stockholm, I pressed onward and visited the Ericsson Globe Arena.  This is a famous globe-shaped sports arena towering 130 metres above Stockholm. I mention the height because I did not go inside the arena:  I rode a globe-shaped “elevator” on an external track to the top!   This is definitely not recommended if you are prone to vertigo but it was a nifty way to see Stockholm from a completely different perspective.   Once again, the Stockholm Card covered the admission cost.

While I’ve got more pictures from Stockholm to share, I’m going to keep them in reserve for now.  The next blog post you see will be from our 2016 journey to the Southern Hemisphere.  Stay tuned to find out what I’ve been hinting about for the past couple of months!