Stockholm holiday, July 2005

This time we took a six night city break staying in the Hotel Diplomat - a comfortable hotel in an early 20th century building, with a couple of wonderful manual lifts (elevators) - one with a seat! There was a direct flight to Stockholm from Edinburgh, but we had to travel back via Copenhagen.

Nybroviken in the evening light; lovely late evenings at that time of year		Looking across Nybroviken to the Hotel Diplomat
Boats near Skeppsholmen - there are boats everywhere in Stockholm		A narrow street in Gamla Stan, the old town
Looking towards the parliament building from the royal palace		Strömbron - with some bedrock showing in the channel, and some crazy sculpture (a hand and a nose) floating near the bridge
The Vasa museum building - complete with masts! There are a couple of museum ships in the harbour as well		The Vasa, capsized and sank in Stckholm harbour in 1628, and now preserved in a dry dock
The head of Nybroviken again, in daylight		Stadshuset, the city hall and embarkation point for boats on Lake Mälaren
We took a boat trip out through the archipelago - it is a long way to the open Baltic sea, visible here at Sandhamn		The palace guard on its way along the streets from barracks to the palace, complete with brass band
Lake Mälaren from the island of Björkö, where there was a very early settlement (Birka)		An interesting church with open-air seating, and large doors opening onto the chancel
One of the many replica old boats seen around Birka		The harbour and museum at Birka
And another Birka replica - we saw a family out rowing this one		Note the outboard motor hidden under a rag on the side of this one!
Street sculpture in Stockholm

The weather was generally pretty good - only one day was really wet. We had plenty time for the boat trips, though John would have quite liked another half day to hire a sailing dinghy in the harbour!