Kylin's European Grand Adventure: Day 5 Stockholm

Today we rode the subway (tunnelbana) to central and tried to find the location for the hop on/hop off tour. We couldn't find the street so finally asked an older woman who pointed to the street down below us. It never dawned on us that there were two levels to the map,which we could see once we knew where or how to look! The our company in all the cities so ar has had more than one tour route so today we decided to do the tour that included a boat ride. We got off the boat and I couldn't even see the lake so I asked. The driver got off the boat, walked a few feet and waved his hand toward a path that led to the lake. Hmm! So we set off and came to a boat dock with several young I people sun a thing. Hmm! No boat or anything that looked commercial. Soon others from the bus joined us and, shortly, a boat pulled up to the dock and we walked around all the sunbathers and got on the boat. The lake was part of the Royal Park which is 7 times the size of Central Park. None of the photos should show a Swedish beach. :). There really was not much to see from the water side. One of the stops included the royal palace where the Crown Princess lives with her commoner husband. The marriage had to be approved by the Swedish Parliament. Some other interesting facts about the monarchy are: it has been in existence since the 900's; in the 1200 's it became Christianized, the king and the crown price/princess are forbidden by the constitution to be any religion except the state religion religion. The current line of royalty actually descend from a French officer in Bonaparte's army. He was very popular with the Swedes and Norway. According to the tour, Stockholm has 30 inhabited islands.

We wandered in the opera house area and found an outside cafe where I had water and John a beer. It was across the street from a large park where live music was playing, people were eating at many outside restaurants, families were playing. Very neat! We walked over to Old Town (Gamla Slan) and walked around the exterior of the Royal Palace (one of their 11 palaces). We watched the changing of the guard - quite regimented and toured the royal chapel. This palace took 60 years to construct and was built after the three crowns palace burned in the late 1600's. it has 608 rooms and is the largest palace in the works till used by a royal head of state. We wandered around old town for a couple of hours before heading back to the hotel on the tunnelbana.

We called about our new credit cards and learned they shipped them to SC. .??? What? Really disappointing. Please pray that we either get the cards in Munich or that we really don't need them! It hasn't been an issue in Sweden but that is not true in Germany.

Tonight is laundry in the sink night. Will post some pictures tomorrow and let you know how that goes!

Met women from Seattle today and our waiter tonight was from Lebanaon. He's lived here since he was 14.