Cruisin' Together (Hej! from Stockholm, Sweden)

Stockholm was definitely a part of our itinerary for September 12-14... and I was kinda freaking out that we still hadn't booked for the trip 2 days before our departure.. My hubby's contact person wasn't replying... some of his officemates wanted to join but were still undecided, etc... After about 2-3 days of pestering him with  "beb, can you please call up Viking Line.... now??" (coz I didn't know his officemates' arrangements), he finally gave in. And thank God for my persistence, coz we got the very last available cabin!!! It didn't matter anymore that the cabin was below water level, as long as we could leave for Stockholm Friday...

Stockholm is very beautiful and has a different character than Helsinki... I'd say that Helsinki is "masculine", and Stockholm very "feminine" in terms of architecture and charm. We had a limited time in Stockholm so we prepared an itinerary:

Gamla Stan (Old Town) – it’s a small island in the middle of Stockholm. I loved the old buildings and the little shops. Picturesque view! We also posed at Stockholm’s narrowest alley, Marten Trotzigs (less than a meter wide)… My hubby and I were joking that some eskenitas in the Philippines were even narrower than this… J

Royal Coin Cabinet – we saw the biggest coin in the world! Strange though, that it’s rectangular, almost like the size of a laptop... solid metal so it's much, much heavier!

Royal Palace (Royal Crown Jewels, Royal Carriages, Royal Armoury -- late 14^th-18th century collections)

The Royal Palace has different museums, but we went only to the top 3 that interested us. I must have said “WOW!” a hundred times - each one louder than the previous - as I ogled the 15^th century Royal Crowns, Scepters, Orbs, Knights (and horses’) Armours, royal clothes, boots, sleepwear.. and the Royal Carriages!!! I didn’t expect that they would actually look like the ones in fairy tales - with fabrics and threads of silver and gold! The gems on the crowns were unbelievable and must be worth hundreds of millions… the diamonds were huge (and so many!).. and the details very intricate. For example, from a foot away, you’d see a tiny dot on the crown… but if you peer closely, you’d realize that the tiny dot was a sculpted face, with a body, a crown and scepter with little jewels! Too bad we were not allowed to take pictures of the crowns… I just got myself 2 books on Royal Crown Jewels and Royal Armoury and Carriages… It was truly was an honor having seen those collections. It gave me goosebumps!!!

After that, we headed to a mall, then a small museum called “The Medieval Stockholm”, but after everything that we’d seen in the Royal Palace, we were bored with their stuff. We just went around the market stalls in the plaza and got some smoked cheese and marmalade cheese (yup cheese with marmalade mixed in it! Yum!), had some sausages, Dutch pancakes, coffee… and guess what, we found a Fisheye2 Lomo at a camera store along Gamla Stan… we just had to get it for our Paris trip, especially for the Eiffel Tower... yipee... 

Too late when we realized that we forgot to go to the Army Museum where the Viking collections were. I would have loved to go to the Museum of National Antiquities and Vasa Museum too if we had more time, but as hubby said, it was a reason for us to go back someday... I had a wonderful time in Stockholm, and I’ve fallen in love with the Royal Palace collections…

It really breaks my heart not being able to share with you pictures now… L