Fun Stockholm

I can not tell it all! We have been at so many places in Stockholm, they are all beautiful and each of them have an impressive history.
On Wednesday we went to Vasa Museum. It’s a huge royal boat build in 1628 which first set sail on 10 August 1628 and sank on her maiden voyage in Stockholm harbour. It was found again after 333 years on the seabed in 1961. It was pieced together and now is restored with 98 percent of original materials. It is so beautifully decorated with hundreds of carved sculptures.
We continued our journey and visited the Nordic Museum and from there did a tour around the whole city with ‘hop on hop off’ buses and boats. We finished the day at Grona Lund, a sort of children playground where our boys had lots of fun, including in the aquarium with a ‘World of Frogs’. Thursday we visited the Nobel museum, the royal armory and the Incredible big Skyview ‘ Ball’. All the way to the top.
As I always like to learn new cultural of every country I visit, I did not leave Stockholm without learning the culture. So the last day in Stockholm we visited Skansen. Skansen is the oldest open-air museum in the World and showcases Sweden through its animals, buildings, farms and zoo with Nordic animals, and a lot of domestics animals still to be seen among the many buildings and farms at Skansen.
As last week I visited the Zuiderzee Museum, I was expecting to see the same set up of the buildings and everything around it. But it was totally different. First we started with another Aquarium, where we saw some animals, from there we entered a school which is 108 years old. The life was not easy that time as children needed to go to school one day and the next day they would then go to help their parents on the farm. There was one teacher at that school for more than 50 children between 7 and 13 years old. While I was sitting in those chairs which are so old, I kind of remembered my memory of my Primary school time. We visited many farm houses in the park, all made with wooden planks. They are very tiny inside but well organized. When we went out to a small square in a farmstead I saw a beautiful lady Stella, she was having small pieces of wood and old rags. She invited me to make a doll out of those materials. This was something I was good at when I was young. My Son Akira started making one but did not have a clue how to pull this together. He made a face on the piece of wood and I helped him to make an outfit for the doll. It was like I was traveling back in time when we used to use banana flowers or corn to make dolls and tie them to our backs like mothers did with us as babies! Showing Akira this piece of my youth experience made me proud! We went down from the hill on which Skansen is built with a cable -cart, carrying our wooden dolls with us. These are nice souvenirs from Skansen . I am glad we visited it !
Now ready for our next destination Vasteras.
Peace ,
Eliane.