Okay... maybe the Dutch should of just spoken up....

During our visit in Stockholm we visited The Vasa Museum on the island of Djurgården. It is a museum that displays the only complete salvaged 16th century war ship and is also one of the worlds largest artifacts in a museum.

The Vasa was a magnificent ship that was one of the largest and most heavily armed of her time built by Dutch immigrants in Sweden. She was decorated with very ornate wooden carvings and painted in bright and vivid colors. A ship made for the King by his very tall requests. Like most people who have power in this world,the King had too big of an ego and was very impatient to get the Vasa out of the shipyard and into the Baltic Fleet.

It’s assumed the Dutch builders knew the ships requested specs were not sound but being fearful of speaking up during a time of war and economic set backs and fear of being deported just kept to themselves and did their job of building the ship as requested. With an extra gun deck and thus double the amount of ammo with no compensation added someplace else to hold this the Vasa far too top heavy and doomed.

It sank just mere minutes from setting sail on her maiden voyage. A wind stronger then a summer breeze flew through the bay and the tall ship just tipped right over and sank… never to be feared by Poland or Russia. Instead it has sat at the bottom of the bay and even became lost until 1958 when it was found and brought back to the surface to be salvaged and turned into a museum.

If you are going to go to only 1 museum in Stockholm, I highly recommend choosing this one as it is unique. The re-salvaged Vasa is quite a sight to be seen.

However, the Stockholm Card is a great value if you plan to be in the city for over 24 hours. It gets you into all the museums for free, free entrance into most attractions, free transit rides, some free ferries and boat tours, and discounts to everything else. We only got it for 24 hours, saw a fair share of museums, rode transit lots, got into Tivoli for free (you have to pay for your rides), and even rode transit for free once our pass expired as you just flash it at the window. If you hold the card a sneaky way they can’t see the time it expires. There is so much offered on the Stockholm card it’s impossible to see it all in 24 hours. The 48 or 72 hours might be a better bet as you can then probably fit in a boat tour ontop of a bunch of museums and attractions. All in the best value discount card available!

Want to buy an air dryer?

Before we left on our trip we managed to hook up with an old friend of mine who had just moved to Sweden in the last couple of months. Our travel plans included going across Scandinavia and into Russia and Stockholm was on that list. Allan and his wife Tanya graciously hosted us while we were on route and provided us with a much appreciated bed to sleep on!

Stockholm is a great port city and looks/feels very much like Canada. Our visit was pretty short – 4 days – and we had a great time visiting and strolling around the piers with Allan and family. We even happened to see Mr T on the television selling some wares! A bunch of dinners, drinks and laughs ensued with a bit of relaxation that was needed.

Our plan was to next take a ferry from Stockholm to Helsinki, and then a train to St Petersburg. Unfortunatly the money gods didn’t agree with us as the ferry to Helsinki would have been just over $750 and the train another $300. This is a point where the Eurorail train pass would have helped us with a 50% savings on the Viking line ferry. A little discouraged we started looking into less expensive options.

We had wanted to go to Riga, Latvia after Russia and thought why not see if we can go there? We found a cheap flight on Ryan Air out of Stockholm for $40 each and booked it quickly. I’ve heard about Ryan Air flying out of secondary airports but this is a bit ridiculous, 100KM’s is another city in Europe. They offer great airfairs but once they charge you $6 per person for online booking, $4 for using a credit card, $12 for carrying on bag and once you factor in travel to the ends of the earth to catch a plan it almost comes up a wash. Defiantly have to keep an eye on the costs involved of these great deals. But if you book far enough ahead and can manage the logistics it does work out to be cheaper than other means of travelling.

With our knees jammed into the hard plastic shell of the seat in front of us, we were off to Riga!

Spotted at Moderna Museet