We took the boatshuttleservice two stops to the Royal Palace where we disembarked.  The Royal Palace is a large building that the king works in while in Stockholm.  His royal residence is 25 miles outside of town.  The Royal Palace has been built on a hill overlooking the harbor giving it a marvelous view.  One thing that might have influenced what I wrote earlier about this being the nicest city was that for the first time on this trip we had 80 percent blue skies with actual sunshine making the city look a bit cheerier than the other cities we’ve seen that have been cloaked in gloomy clouds. 

Matt had talked to someone on the ship that told him that you get the best exchange rates at the ATM machines.  I’m skeptical but I let Matt have his way and we got money from an ATM.  Swedish Krona is at a 7 to 1 exchange rate with the US Dollar.  Next we wandered around the palace in search of a bathroom for Matt.  We reached the center square of the palace where a bunch of the Swedish Royal Guard were milling about getting ready to perform their version of the changing of the guard.  I hung out there waiting to see this while Matt went off to find a bathroom. 

Matt returned right as they started.  The guards are dressed in royal blue uniforms with silver helmets that resembled a German WWI General’s helmet that you would see in movies with the spikes coming out of the top.  The thing that stuck out about the changing of the guard was the guards were just sitting around on a bench talking and moving around just like the tourists who had gathered to see them.  This just ruined the illusion that they were professional soldiers.  They could have been just actors waiting for their cue but in plain site of their audience.  The bell in the church tower next to the square rang 10:00 AM and they formed their lines and started their routine.  It took about five minutes and it was over. 

At this time I got to hear Matt bitch about his bathroom experience.  Matt’s bitching about the smallest things cracks me up to no end.  The littlest inconvenience can make him miserable which is when I get to laugh at him.  He didn’t have change to pay to use the bathroom at wherever he had gone so he bought a coke to get change.  We he had been talking to the person about why he needed the change and she gave him 10 Swedish Krona coins and told him that the bathroom was only 5 Swedish Krona and it would probably give him change.  Matt put in his 10 Swedish Krona and didn’t get change.  He came back complaining about the lady not giving him 5 Swedish Krona coins.  I had bought a book in the meantime about Stockholm and had gotten a 5 Swedish Krona coin, which I promptly pulled out of my pocket to taunt him with. 

We wandered around the Royal Palace for a while and ran into the back of the Nobel museum.  For some reason there is a 1950’s style small mobile home in the back with the Nobel Museum logo on it.  From here we went to the small island that had the Parliament House located on it.  One of the rivers running between Lake Malaren and Strommen Harbor had signs indicating there was free salmon fishing. 

The ferry ride through harbor around Stockholm is very picturesque.  There was one section of houses and shops on the harbor front that I think they said went for 10000 Swedish Krona a square meter.  Bjorn Borg owned an apartment in this area. 

We pulled up to the Vasa Museum and had two options to get to the entrance.  Our usual luck with 50/50 choice panned out, we chose poorly.  But at least going this way gave us a good view at what we found out was the original dry dock used in the restoration of the Vasa. 

The entrance fee to the Vasa Museum was 80 Swedish Krona and it was well worth it.  The Vasa is a Swedish war ship built for King Gustav II Adolf in 1625.  It was the biggest man of war ever built.  It was also the biggest man of war to sink on its maiden voyage at the time.  Due to the hull’s ballast being not enough and being of rocks that were too large the boat sank in Stockholm’s harbor on its maiden voyage.  After restoration and measurements were taken the Swedes determined another thing that would have saved the ship was if the hull had been 60 centimeters wider.  I found that hard to believe. 

The ship was rediscovered in 1956 and brought to the surface again in 1961 in incredibly good condition.  Because of the temperature of the water and the fact that the water has very little salt they normal animals that would eat the wood of the hull don’t exist in the Baltic Sea.  In fact once they brought the ship back to the surface and pumped all the water out it floated on its own. 

The ship is really impressive and huge.  It is 90 percent intact from the original.  The best thing the museum did with the restoration was to replace any lost wood with different light colored wood.  This way you can really tell how much of the original was recovered.  Another impressive thing was the elaborate woodcarvings that covered the ship.  The entire back end of the ship was full of the carvings.  They also had made reproductions of the carvings and painted them their original colors.  The ship must have really been amazing when it was finished and painted.  The other thing that gets you is the size of the ship. The ship is about 60 meters long and they actually built the museum around the ship after it was restored in its dry dock. 

Matt was getting hungry since he’d had a small breakfast and I had needed to go back to the ship also to get a new battery for my camera.  My first camera mistake of the trip was forgetting to pack my extra battery today.  I took a bunch of flash photos in the museum and the battery in the camera had discharged.  We took the boatshuttleservice back to the ship to have lunch and get my extra battery.  They had a limited lunch at the Lido Dining Room.  I had pizza, which has been great the whole trip, and a pesto chicken wrap.  We had an hour to do this and return to catch the next boatshuttleservice ferry to town. 

Our original plan was to just take the boatshuttleservice for an entire loop of its circuit.  This was because we had to be back at the ship by 4:30 PM and the ferry we took was the 3:00 PM ferry that would get us back to the ship at 4:00 PM.  The beer on the ferry was only 2 Euro, $2, or 15 Swedish Krona.  For the first time dollars were our best bet and we didn’t have any.  We got to the first stop and changed our plans.  We got of at the Gamla Stan area of Stockholm and decided we would wander around a little then walk back to the ship and walk off lunch at the same time.  The Gamla Stan area is near the Royal Palace and is the old part of town with lots of shopping.  I got a few trinkets while Matt tried to make sense of his map.  We made it back to the ship at about 4:15 PM. 

The Westerdam departed Stockholm about 5:00 PM and made its spectacular run through the Swedish Archipelagos back to open sea.  For four hours we slowly made our way through hundreds of islands and land to get out to sea.  It reminded me a little of like the sailing through the Inside Passage of Alaska but the size of the Panama Canal.  We chilled out on the back of the ship for a couple of hours just enjoying the view.  There were a bunch of kids on the back trying to feed the seagulls with cookies, bread and ice cream cones.  They actually got the seagulls to take food right out of their hands.  The funniest was the ice cream cone, without ice cream of course, where the first seagull would take a bite and make it explode.  Then and armada of seagulls swoop in and finish off the pieces. 

After a couple of hours we decided it was nice enough to hang out in the pool and hot tub on the back deck to enjoy the pool.  We went back to the cabin and changed then returned to the back deck, Matt in his special Holland America robe.  Matt jumped into one of the hot tubs with another guy who was already there and I jumped in the pool.  The second hot tub already had a couple of people and these hot tubs on the back deck are only big enough for two people.  When the guy left I joined Matt in the hot tub, which was hotter than the one at the main pool I had been in earlier. 

 After about an hour Matt decided to head back to the room and get ready for dinner.  He had my room key in his robe and I asked him to leave it with my stuff.  He started checking for my key and couldn’t find it.  He couldn’t find his key either and realized he had put on another persons robe.  Oops, he didn’t think I caught him until he noticed me laughing at him as he was trying to nonchalantly change robes without the other robe owner noticing. 

I went to dinner at the regular restaurant for the first time in three nights.  I had an avocado/sour cream cold soup and lamb chops.  The lamb was outstanding.  We had a nice conversation about our last days in port with our British tablemates and stayed until about 10:15 PM.  We made it back to the room where I changed and we went to see the show in the ship’s theater.  I had heard of the guy before because he plays Las Vegas all the time.  His name was Bill Acosta and he was terrible.  He almost seemed like he wasn’t interested in performing at all.  His thing is to impersonate people singing their famous songs.  He tried Sammy Davis Jr. and tried to dance a little but it was a pathetic tribute to Sammy Davis Jr.  He also tried some lame present day computer version of Abbott and Costello’s bit, Whose On First.  We left after that and came back to the room and went to bed.  The next day is Visby and we only have a few hours in town.