Rain and a last look at Stockholm

Our last day in Stockholm and we woke to gray skies, but we packed up and loaded the car after breakfast and then walked into town intending to take the Under the Bridges Tour (a two hour cruise through the canals around the city)...after we tracked down Marten Trotzig's Grand, the narrowest street in Gamla Stan.

It started to rain when we got off the T-bana and we figured it would be short-lived, so we just slogged on. We eventually stopped and took refuge under an awning and watched the crowds of people (mostly school kids, who we think were on a scavenger hunt, since they all came by in pairs with sheaves of paper and stopped at the same buildings) for a while. We had to resort to the mapping feature on Mark's phone to find the narrow little alley.

Deciding that cruising around in the rain wasn't going to be much fun, we opted instead for the Historiska Museet - the displays on vikings and medieval Stockholm were amazingly well done and interesting; the gold room, in particular, with the finds of dozens of Viking and later-era hoards was fascinating. This museum has the only three gold collars ever found. It also has the remains of what was reputed to be th elargest hoard ever found, which was dug up in the 18th century by a local nobleman. He brought the find to the King, who was unable to afford to buy all of it and so the museum has only a couple of small gold torcs and a few sword decorations...the noblemftok the rest of the find and melted it down to make ducats and pay off his huge debts! Mark liked this museum far more than the Nordiske Museum, and we wandered around for most of the morning.

We found Ostermalms Saluhall -- a huge indoor market -- and browsed around for lunch along with half the population of Stockholm, I think. We eventually settled on take-away from one of the vendors -- chicken (kyckling) croquettes, swedish moose meatballs with hunter sauce, gruyere potatoes, and bread from one of the bakeries. Great lunch, and now I can say I've eaten Swedish Moose Balls. Which were quite tasty.

Mark was inexorably drawn to the Armemuseum, so we made a quick detour to walk through the exhibition there before we headed back to the hotel to pick up the car. We have a reservation near Gothenburg (which I have been told is Yoh-te-burry) tonight, so we're heading across Sweden, past Lake Vannen, and down to Floda where we're staying at Naas Slott. The rain and wind picked up with a vengeance and by the time we arrived there it was gray and cold. Since we showed up very late, I had made arrangements with the caretaker to leave the keys and such and we spent a few minutes trying to find the "blue box" with the promised instructions before we could get in and dry off. It's a lovely place - the mansion was built by one of the burghers who was involved with the Swedish East India Company, and we stayed in the south wing of the house (which is actually a separate building, it just looks like it's connected from the front). Very comfortable and quite lovely - although i can't quite get used to the "two separate duvets" on the double bed. After a very quick foray to find dinner (local pizza place, which actually stayed open late to feed us -- we hadn't checked the time and didn't realize that they were actually closing when we showed up!) we were back and asleep in minutes.

Off to Gothenburg tomorrow and then on to visit family near Hishult.