Stockholm, Sweden March 7th, 2014 day one: wandering in Gamla Stan and Vasa museum

upon arrival an elegant dinner with friends at their lovely home 

local church in quiet park on way to friends' dinner 

same church in the daylight

"Marten Trotzigs Grand", 90 meters wide and the narrowest street in stockholm. It is located on the medieval island of "Gamla Stan" where we started our day on an early cool Friday morning.

fun store windows in gamla stan

Quiet and cold streets in Gamla Stan, the largest of the islands in Stockholm.

fun buildings, most with old, wonderful stone door frames 

narrow cobbled medieval streets and old churches 

 lovely colorful Stortorget square with buildings dating back to 1650

one of the oldest buildings in the square now a lively coffee shop.  we warmed up here on Sunday morning with a cappuccino and wonderful yummy, sticky bun

crossing from one island to the next

walking over toward the "wealthy" strandvagen street

pretty water views everywhere

Swedish horse souvenirs

 Storkyrkan, 700 yr old, church in gamla stan. lovely red brick columns, an altar from 1650, wonderful gothic arched ceiling and much more

fantastic wooden statue of st. george and a fanciful dragon from 1489 located on side of altar. one of the most famous  Gothic statues in Northern Europe. 

new, brightly  colored stained glass in back of  church, one on the right shows a kneeling man. see if you can see it.

some of the arches in the church still had their painted ceilings

St George is popular there, one of their patron saints, shown here in a small square in Gamla Stan

Riddarhuset, house of nobility in the Dutch Baroque style where the coats of arms of nobel families are displayed. We had fun locating one we were interested in.

room in house of nobles with the noble families coat of arms on the wall, all in tin

we walked over to the island of Ridderholmen to see the church where the royals are buried but it was closed. 

After lunch we moved onto the island of Djurgarden where many wonderful museums are located. We spent the rest of the afternoon in the Vasa museum which houses the Vasa warship from 1632. Incredible story from the beginning to end. I loved the place.

view of most of the ship which sank on its first trip in 1628 1 km from shore.  it was raised in the late 1950's and was 98% intact due to the seawater having neither salt nor woodworms in it.

incredibly carved stern of  Vasa warship with royal coat of arms. ship has over 700 statues/carvings on it.

another shot of stern

a small, modern model reconstruction of the boat, here showing the stern with the crown seal at top in what would have been the original colors

amazing carvings on the ship

There are 19 roman emperors carved on the ship. One can never get away from the power of Rome it seems.

close up reconstruction of royal seal

more of ship,. It is a great museum on 3 floors with very good detailed signs.

this sign was a funny surprise

the building where the ship is, the mast coming out of the building shows the height of the ship

a view from the ferry toward sodermalm where we were staying, our hotel is visible in the photo, mid way up hill

another view from ferry toward gamla stan

We took a stroll along the top of the hill in sodermalm, the island where we were staying, to see the view and the house boats

there were many galleries in sodermalm and this one had a gorgeous, glass octopus (more on this in another blog)

nice views on one of our walks near hotel in sodermalm

day one was very busy filled with lots of fun. I have a tremendous amount of photos so will try to narrow them down and upload more of them. An exciting place to visit, lots to do and see, expensive, but I dont' think anyone would be disappointed in the city. Some of the above photos are a bit out of order but I got tired trying to fix them all in the right place.

Friday night dinner at  "den Gyldene Freden" (the golden peace) in Gamla Stan in a building from 1722.