STOCKHOLM
Day 72 Sunday, 11th August 2019
We go on the ferry to Gamla Stan, the Old Town, and walk northwards up Osterlangsgatan and come out at the Official Residence of H M the King. Designed by Nicodemus Tessin the Younger, the Royal Palace is in the style of the Italian Baroque. Completed in 1754, it is partly built on the remains of the former Tre Kroner Castle (Three Crowns Castle) which was destroyed by fire in 1697.
The Vikings came to Stockholm from Lake Malaren (west of Stockholm) to improve their access to the sea for trade – they were the capital city’s founder members! Around 1250 Stockholm’s leaders wrote a town charter and signed up to the Hanseatic League. The Tre Kroner castle was commissioned in 1252, but a 100 years later the Black Death wiped out a third of the population.
We walk through the Courtyard of the Royal Palace, and find Sweden’s Parliament on another island to the north of Gamla Stan.
Love these ladies dressed in traditional costume, walking past from the Square (Stortorget). We see them later being photographed with Japanese tourists outside the Royal Palace!
After the Palace we go to the Nobel-museet, which presents the history of the Nobel prizes and their recipients, with a focus on the intellectual and cultural aspects of invention. We have a coffee in the café and take a guided tour in English. Did you know that there were 5 categories of prizes: Chemistry, Physics, Medicine, Literature, Peace? And Economics came later. Nobel put the original categories in his Will.
There are different certificates for each category and gold medals for each recipient, and prize money too. So far 902 Nobel Prizes have been awarded – sometimes as many as three people get the prize for one category, or organisations such as Unicef and Amnesty.
We graduate towards the Martin Luther King exhibit and it has many facts about his life and work, and many photographs too, which we spend ages perusing.
My favourite authors (who received the Nobel prize for Literature) ever since I was at Crossley and Porter’s in Halifax – John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway.
Two of the Peace prize winners – Al Gore and Mikhail Gorbachev.
Storkyrkan Cathedral is next on the list! It’s Stockholm’s oldest building, consecrated in 1306, and one-time venue for royal weddings and coronations. The Gothic-baroque interior includes very extravagant royal-box pews designed by Tessin the Younger, as well as George and the Dragon, a dramatic sculpture to commemorate the victory over the Danes in 1471.
After all that we go to Restaurant Kaffeegillet for some lunch. It rains on and off – so we put our kagouls on and off – but the umbrellas are a real menace, catching you in the eye when you’re not expecting it!
We can hear the band playing and have to take photos back at the Royal Palace. Aren’t the soldiers’ uniforms wonderful and colourful? The shiny gold helmets must weigh a ton!
We discover on Google maps that there’s a Lady Hamilton Hotel just round the corner. They’ve got many pictures of Emma Hamilton when she was doing her ‘poses’, which I’ll send to my brother because he gave us two of her portraits. I show the receptionist our card which has Lady Hamilton, our boat, on it and she waxes lyrical about going sailing! She tells us that there’s a Lord Nelson Hotel just round the corner – and we find it too.
We wend our way back to the ferry, going down a very busy tourist street on a mission to find the narrowest street in Gamla Stan (below). The other photo is me in the Stortorget.
Nearby is the only grocery store in Gamla Stan. We have to buy what we couldn’t carry last night – it’s the Coop but not like the big one in Whitby. It’s very tiny and only has tiny trolleys to get down the very narrow aisles.
Get the ferry back to Djurgarden, our island where the marina is situated. We eat on board again, Bean and Bacon casserole, and the red sky promises good weather tomorrow.
Lady Hamilton 2019 