Stockholm

Sunday, May 23rd, we flew from Bergen to Stockholm. The weather decided to go a bit crummy on us. As a matter of fact, I think I experienced the worst turbulence while preparing to land in Stockholm. Luckily Rachel thought it was hilarious. She laughed and wanted the ride to get bumpy again. I just had to turn away and let her dad take over. I'm not particularly found of turbulence. Anyhow, by the time we got to our hotel it was mid afternoon. We decided to let the girls play a bit at the hotel and then we set out and braved the rain. After doing a quick grocery store run, we headed to Gamla Stan (The Old Town) to walk around and get some dinner.

A picture of Rachel down the narrowest alley in the city, which is less than a meter wide:
Rachel with a troll - trolls are big in Sweden as well!
Stororget (The Big Square):

On Monday we decided to make the most of a sunny morning. We weren't sure how long it was going to last, but luckily it lasted the whole day. We spent the majority of the day in Skansen, an open air museum and zoo. The girls had a great time! Rachel's most favorite thing of all was watching the glass-blowers. We ended up watching them create glass pieces twice that day. We even bought some glass Christmas ornaments that had been made there. Rachel would have spent a lot longer watching the glass-blowers, if we had let her. Some pictures of our day in Skansen:

There were lots of little houses and buildings to check out. In a lot of the buildings there would be workers in traditional dress doing various chores, like knitting.

We also enjoyed checking out all the Scandinavian animals. Rachel was especially excited about the reindeer. She had gone on reindeer hunts with her Papa Michaelson this past winter and she was pretty proud that she had finally found some reindeer! :)

Pictures in the rose garden (mostly tulips...):
A family picture with Stockholm in the background:
One view of Stockholm as we took the ferry back:

That evening we went in search of a restaurant with Swedish meatballs, but once again we didn't have much luck. Every restaurant menu we checked out always had lasagna, which we thought was interesting...

Tuesday was a rainy day, so we had planned correctly. Tuesday was our museum day! Our first stop was Junibacken, a children's museum. The girls had so much fun! The museum focuses on Swedish children's literature and the story of Pippi Longstocking is the central focus. I grew up watching the Pippi Longstocking movie, so it was a fun museum for me as well! We enjoyed plenty of play time, a train ride through Swedish stories, and a live performance by Pippi herself (in Swedish of course!). Audrey was so funny during the 30-minute performance. She would laugh right along with everyone else. The museum could have definitely been an all day affair. We definitely enjoyed the hours we spent there. We packed lunches that day, so we were able to eat at the museum and enjoy some time after lunch as well.

Andy and Rachel on an airplane in the play area right at the beginning of the museum:

Our Ice Princess:
The girls playing in the pages of a gigantic book:
Rachel playing in Pippi's house:
On Pippi's horse:
Playing with the blocks:
Our Pippi outside the museum:

After enjoying the children's museum for several hours we walked over to the Vasa Museum. Once again, we enjoyed ourselves... But we were a bit disappointed that you couldn't actually explore the restored ship. Quite an interesting story. The Vasa set sail on her first voyage in August 1628. Unfortunately it sank after sailing less than one nautical mile. In 1961 the wreck was salvaged and reconstruction began. It was and is quite an ornate ship. Our pictures don't do it justice. It was very dark inside the museum, I'm sure so lights won't harm the ship, but it made it difficult to get pictures. Here are a few:

We finished up our day of museums around dinnertime. We explored Stockholm a bit more, visited a few shops, and grabbed some dinner.

Wednesday we flew home. :( We definitely enjoyed our Scandinavia adventure and are grateful that we had the opportunity to go. During our holiday we soon realized how expensive both Norway and Sweden are. Grocery stores and believe it or not, 7-Elevens, became our friends. We thought it was pretty funny that you can't find a 7-Eleven in Texas, but you can in Scandinavia. Public transportation was quite pricey as well, which surprised us. Usually subways are pretty reasonable.

It's kind of sad finishing up my last post of our European adventures. We feel so blessed to have had the opportunity we did. Rachel would fly back to Amsterdam in a heartbeat. She's doing just fine, but you can tell she misses Amsterdam. We went to Ikea the other day (a familiar store to her) and all she could talk about was Amsterdam. It definitely became home to us and we do miss it. But we are also grateful to be back in the U.S. Mixed emotions, for sure. So, here's to future posts of our American adventures! :)