Scandinavia Day 19 Stockholm to Stavanger

Day 19 was the end of our time in Sweden.  First was saw the royal palace.  Then it was a lot of travel including a few delayed flights on our way to Stavanger Norway

Lincoln always wakes up in the strangest positions

Giant breakfast in the hotel before heading out

Those crazy pink birds on our hotel's street as we left for the royal palace

View of what I think is the royal burial church as we entered old town

The royal palace courtyard, this time way less crowded

The throne room, which is the first room as you enter the royal apartments

Closeup of the throne

Next were lots of rooms showing all sorts of royal awards and dresses.  We didn't have much time to look at anything because Lincoln was on a mission to find all the animals on his kids map

Fancy dining room

Another reception hall, all very grand.  Not quite Versailles, but lots of similarities

Lincoln with his animal map back in the inner courtyard

And then time for Lincoln to pet dad while we looked around

The royal chapel

View back at the Stockholm cathedral

Final view of old town

Shopping street we walked down to get back to our hotel.  We passed a lot of espresso houses and stopped at one of them for drinks while we finished packing

We got back to confirm no suitcase.  So we packed up the broken one.  Here is Lincoln with his stick we were hoping to leave behind, but he snuck it into our luggage to make the trip to Norway

We had about a 10 min walk to the airport express.  18 min to get between downtown and the airport.  Sometimes going at nearly 200 km/hr

Nice platform, very efficient

Then we made it to the airport with plenty of time to have a nice lunch

We even had time to try Joe and the Juice Coffee which we had been seeing all over.  It was fine, but pretty expensive

Waiting for takeoff...we waited for quite a while.  We were late taking off for unknown reasons

Quick transfer in Oslo...but then we actually ended up with plenty of time because our next flight was an our late

At Stavanger we had to take a bus to the terminal

Then a very pricey taxi ride to our apartment

We arrived to find out we were on the top floor of this great building.  It sucked to carry our stuff up but the apartment was amazing!

We had a balcony and lots of windows overlooking the harbor.  Plus 3 bedrooms

We went to noodle noodle for dinner.  It was very good and nice to get away from meat and potatoes for a night.  Plus it was affordable for Norway at least

Dumplings

After dinner we did a short walk to see a little of the town before it started raining

Statue by our hotel

It was already quite late, so we just made sure we were ready to brave the rain tomorrow and went to bed.

Scandinavia Day 17 Lake Siljan to Stockholm

Day 17 was another travel/stop and visit things day.  We started at Lake Siljan, stopped at Sweden's longest pier, visited a medieval copper mine, some Viking burial mounds, Uppsala University and finally ended in Stockholm.  All in all another pretty good day.

We had a good breakfast in our apartment before packing up to leave Lake Siljan

On the way out we stopped at Rattvik to talk the longest pier in Sweden.  It was over .6 km!

Lincoln rode when he got tired

 View from the pier

At the end of the dock there was this strange sauna/art exhibit

View of the walk back

Lincoln got the play on the dala horse themed playground while I shopped and got some tourist info

Then it was about an hour drive.  The scenery was great!

Next stop is a very old copper mine. It was an underground mine that became a pit mine when it collapsed almost 500 years ago

It is the source of the red paint for all the houses in Dalarna 

The museum we didn't have time to go see

We had picnic lunch at the playground near the mine

On the way out we stopped for coffee and of course Lincoln's pink drink

On the way out of town it rained super hard.  Like we could barely keep going.  Thankfully it didn't rain that hard for long

Next stop was the 6th century and viking burial grounds just outside of Uppsala

This is a 12th century church built on top of a pagen site

Old tryptic

Original baptism font

Ruin stone outside the church

We walked around the mounds, but our visit got cut a little short because rain was coming again

Pretty fields around the mounds

Lincoln finally let us take his picture.  We then raced to the car and made it just before it started to rain

The final stop before getting to Stockholm was Uppsala to see the University including the library, Linneaus garden and the Cathedral.  We quickly walked through the botanical garden to try to avoid the next round of rain

Sadly the library was closed when we got there

The Uppsala cathedral where lots of important Sweeds are burried

Including Linneus

Common mary statue

The beautiful ceiling

The place was huge.  We took a ton of pictures while we wondered around and waited for the rain to let up a little

The cathedral and University on our walk to the gardens

Old iron bridge

Linnaeus's garden 

There was an annual side and perennial side 

Lincoln loved getting in and smelling the flowers

Pretty delphiniums

Linneus and the museum (which was closed by the time we got there)

Look at the botanical gardens on the quick walk back to avoid getting a parking ticket

We stopped for gas in Stockholm is this gas station built into the side of a building

The rental car return went ok, but we had to lug the broken suitcase a few blocks

Our room on the top floor was pretty neat

We couldn't find an open non expensive restaurant so we ate in the hotel.  Which was still pretty expensive and not super great.  But at least it was food

After dinner we walked around for just a few minutes to see Stockholm before the rain in the morning

Cool buildings by the train station

For some reason the street our hotel was on had all these pink birds hanging over the street

Then we put Lincoln to sleep and stayed up way to late trying to make a plan for the next day that allowed us to see things, but avoid the predicted rain as much as possible.