Day 4 30 July Stockholm

On another beautiful day here, the weather truly been perfect for tourists. Today should be a highlight of our trip to Stockholm as we visit the Vasa Museum and Abba Museum. Also, it’s Elzabeth’s birthday today so there is lots to celebrate!

 

We take a tram to see the museums today. Check out the tram as its decoration features ABBA’s 50^th anniversary of their Eurovision winning song Waterloo. The trams are super-efficient. Everything we wanted to see was in walking distance, about 2 km or 30 minutes. Stockholm is a great city for tourists to get around.

 

This is what the Vasa should have looked like and...

First up we take the tram to the Vasa Museum which houses the Vasa, a 17th-century warship that sank on its maiden voyage and was only salvaged in the 20th century. In fact, it sailed about 1.5 km before sinking. There was even a test run previously that didn’t go well. Perhaps that should have been a hint!

 

The gun ports on the model.

They did try to salvage it without success with the limited technology they had.

It is an extraordinary exhibit and very well presented and it was as busy as it gets. It seems like it is school holidays here.  

We then visited the Nordic Museum which housed a lot of social history of the country. The two things I noticed was that there were no paintings, or security guards. It was worth seeing but not a highlight.

 

For Christmas...really? What is Boxing Day like... 

A kebab prototype that did not go past the experimental stage in R&D (Retch and disgusting).

After a light lunch (nothing from above), we then visited Vrak – the shipwreck museum which was a multimedia and hands on approach to marine archaeology. It was interesting and had some nice uses of technology to engage kids. We now know how to date smoking pipes in Sweden, and bits of wood and bones. (I must update my Linkedin profile CV.)

 We had to wait a little while before we could line up for our 4pm entry to the ABBA Museum. The anticipation grows…It was quite a line to get in and there were lots of people inside but as time went on the crowds thinned out.

Lots of information about the members of ABBA; lots of costumes, performances and awards.

Elizabeth the Birthday Girl has arrived.

Those cat outfits were used for the video of their song SOS.

What a coincidence, I have just something like that at home.

You could get up on stage and be the Fifth Member of ABBA. Everyone was a little shy to do so, but I took the plunge so I could be Elizabeth’s “Dance Monkey” (My apologies to Tones and I – as well as the world of music entertainment for my performance.)

                                              CLICK PLAY, IF YOU DARE.

I am not sure they had this in mind when they said interactive.

A star is born.

If only I had a day job.

 I think that 4 or 4.30 pm time slots are perfect as it was less crowded, but you needed enough people for atmosphere.

 

Video of their Eurovision winning entry.

We can highly recommend the ABBA Museum experience. (Elke would love this!). The museum’s motto is: Walk in. Dance out.

 

That evening we went to dinner in the hotel. The meal was lovely. Who wouldn’t like Swedish meatballs? Our waiter picked our Australian accents right away. We asked if Stockholm was his hometown only to be informed that he was Welsh. He had lived in Stockholm for 25 years. He had left the Welsh seaside town of Conwy when he was 18 years old.  He was very surprised when we said that we knew where Conwy was and had visited there in 2018. We also mentioned that we had visited Cardiff in Wales: He didn’t seem impressed. Apparently, the northern Welsh don’t like the more urbanite southern Welsh – go figure. Maybe it’s like North vs Southern Queensland.