Money, money, money, must be funny, in a rich man’s world

After visiting Sweden, I think I can understand why ABBA had a song like that. Sweden is seriously not a cheap place to visit, though I do have friends who told us Norway is worse. While we have generally avoided staying in the city centre since hotels there tend to be expensive, we were relegated to staying near an industrial area in Stockholm since hotels were just ridiculously expensive almost everywhere.

Somehow the sun seems to be shining brighter in Scandinavia

Vasa Museum was the first place we visited. Just like Titanic, Vasa sanked on its maiden voyage, however the reasons it sank was completely different from that of Titanic. Titanic sank as it departed without the binoculars to permit an early sighting of the iceberg which caused its doom, whereas Vasa sank as it was too top heavy and unstable. Now that the history lesson is over, back to the museum. The piece de la resistance was obviously the reconstructed vessel of Vasa, most of which was salvaged in 1961 after lying in the sea for 333 years. The reconstructed vessel is 95% original,ad since there were no plans or contemporary pictures of the ship, they were basically fixing a giant jigsaw puzzle without a picture to refer to. The museum also contained eleven permanent exhibits which examine the ship, the time in which she was built and her recent history. We both quite enjoyed the one about the salvaging of the ship as visitors can try the diving gear which they wore while doing the salvaging. The diving gear was quite claustrophobic and I really can’t imagine how people can do it for a living then. The exhibition regarding what the different colors and sculptures symbolize was also rather educational. They actually have guided tours for visitors however we missed the English speaking tour so we had to walk around ourselves.

Amazing how they pieced it back together

As it sails off into the sea... literally...

We ended the day with a dinner of Swedish meatballs and some yummy raw salmon, which was kind of like sashimi without the wasabi or soy sauce. The service there weren’t the greatest though and we felt a bit discriminated against. It would not be the first time we feel that way in Sweden. With that unpleasant note, we ended our day and headed back to our hotel for some sleep before hitting the streets again the next day.

Ending the day tired...