Our first two full days in Stockholm, Sweden......

We have now arrived in Sweden and are staying with Petra. Thomas and Bjorn are in the southern part of Sweden and we'll head there on Saturday. Kim's the typist on this note.

This is a picture of Petra's living room. They live in a beautiful old house in Bromma, Sweden about a half hour subway ride from Stockholm.

Here is a picture of her kitchen. She renovated it when they moved in. It was a small galley kitchen with an attached maid's quarters and now it is one big space.

Had to add another George picture!

The first day we took a boat and ate lunch on an island. We had a very Swedish lunch (not!)--hamburgers and hot dogs.

Here is the sign on the island. When I take pictures I usually photograph a sign as well so I have an idea of where we've been.

After we ate lunch and got back to the mainland, we took a long walk to get back to Petra's. I had to take this picture. It could be a scene from northern MN! There is a lake in the background. It's no wonder the Swedes and Norwegians chose to settle in Minnesota--MN and Sweden look so much alike.

The second day we went to a museum all about the Vasa, a VERY fancy war ship built by King Gustavus Adolfus (the second?). On its maiden voyage it sailed for about a half an hour and sunk! It lay at the bottom of the Baltic Sea for more than 330 years. King Gustav (the somethingth) Adolph commissioned a group to bring the boat to the surface. It took about three years for the boat to make it above water and many, many hours to restore it. An interesting fact is that because the boat sunk in the Baltic Sea, the sea worms that usually eat wood weren't able to live in the water so the boat was very well preserved. This is a photo of a scale model of the way the ship looked as it got ready to sail. The acutal ship today is very dark with no paint left on it.

Here are Petra and George on one of our walking trips.

We also went to Skanson, a zoo with Swedish animals and it also had old Swedish buildings--kind of a living history museum. Each building had workers inside who would share information about what we were seeing.

This is from the Vasa. About 30 people died when the boat went under--but there were about 400 total on board. Some of the skulls have been analyzed and remarkably real heads have been created showing what the people might have looked like. You can even see the pores on the nose--really amazing!

I had to add this picture for the Volvo lovers out there (Scott, are you reading?). This one had windshield wipers on the headlights! :)

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We are now back up to date as today (Friday) was a quiet day of rest at Petra's. We slept late, ate breakfast, visited with Petra's daughter, Fanny, as she stopped by home for just a couple of hours, went for a walk to a lake, and picked up groceries on the way back for supper. At one time or another today we talked/video skyped with Casey, Wendy, Skip and Ashley in bed on Thursday night, Skip and Ashley and Link and Kora at home on Friday morning, and Mickie. It was a good day of relaxation. Tomorrow we take the train to their summer home in the south of Sweden. And then we are just a few days from starting our journey home.....