Stockholm; Saturday, 04 June, 2005

Saturday morning dawned with heavy rain, settling down into prolonged drizzle. Not good for sightseeing, but no doubt welcome to the thousands who were running the Stockholm Marathon, that scuppered most of my plans. On the upside, today was the official first day of High season. 6th June (Monday) is national day, so this weekend almost everything is open and running.

To avoid the worst of the rain I took what turned out to be the very last open top tour bus of the day round the city, before transferring onto the more leisurely open top hop-on-hop-off boat. Needless to say, both firmly had their roofs up!

I got off the boat on the island of Djurgården which houses many of the city's museums. First stop was the Biological Museum housed in its own purpose built building, which looks exactly like a Norwegian Stave Church. Inside there are a couple of small exhibits, including a presentation of a Bear and her two cubs from the early 20th century shown as a happy loving family unit, mother on her hind legs, baby clasped to her chest with one had, and toddler holding her other hand, not the most natural of stances for a bear! The museum does admit that it is an example of what was being done in the early 20th century and not how they would display creatures now.

The bulk of the museum is taken up with a 360° diorama showing most of the natural birds and beasts of Sweden. Access to is is up a peculiar double spiral staircase.

From there it was a short walk to the Nordiska museum. The museum was set up to let future generations know what life was like in Sweden in the past. It runs from the 16th Century right up to today, with displays on clothing, fabrics, traditions and design. Strangely in the design section IKEA only get a couple of mentions!

After the Nordiska museum, and with the Marathon I full flow on the street outside, I headed next door to the Vasa Museum. The museum is built around the almost complete remains of the 17th Century battleship the Vasa which sunk, on it's first trip out of docks after being built. It lay on the bed of the lake until the late 1950's when it was rediscovered. From the point at which it was raised from the sea bed until it finally went on full display to the public still took nearly 30 years, with the entire wreck having to be saturated with a type of plastic to replace all the water in it. The museum tells the history of the ship, the background to the reasons why she was built and how she sunk, and the efforts that were gone to to rescue her from her grave.

From the Vasa museum I crossed back over the road, having to run between marathon runners, and walked down to Skansen.

Skansen is a folk part, similar to those in Bunratty, Oslo and Riga. Unlike those, though, it has also diversified into a semi safari-park of native animals with Wolves, Wolverines, Lynx, Bears, Elk, Seals and Bison on view. There is also a small zoo which houses some more exotic creatures including a cage full of ring-tailed lemurs that you can wander through. All made extra special as for the first time all day the sun came out and all the animals were lying out sunbathing (it also helped that it was already almost 6pm and most of the tourists and screaming babies had already gone home!)

I caught the tram back from Skansen back into town and stopped for a bite to eat, before heading back to the hotel.