Living Abroad Round II - Montmorillon: November 2009

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Stockholm Pictures

View from the cliffs of Sodermalm Island

View of Stockholm from Skansen

View of Stockholm from Djurgarden Island

Vasa Ship

Model of the Vasa Ship. It was brightly painted when it sunk to the bottom of the Baltic Sea.

Vasa Ship

Vasa Ship. The holes for the canons all had lion heads on the door.

Vasa Ship

The Royal Palace

Storkyrkan (Cathedral)

Storkyrkan (Cathedral). St. George and the Dragon statue

Storkyrkan (Cathedral)

Skasen Open-Air Museum

Skasen Open-Air Museum. What an old downtown would have looked like

The Opera House (left) and Jacob's Church (right)

Nordiska Museum.

View of Fjallgatan Street (the cliffs) on Sodermalm Island

The "Circus" on Djurgarden Island

Traditional Swedish house. Djurgarden Island.

National Theater.

Sorry for the long delay, but here is the 411 on the remainder of my trip to Stockholm, Sweden. I arrived in Stockholm on Monday November 2nd at 9:40 am. I had to take a long bus ride from the airport to the actual city of Stockholm so I didn't check into my hostel until around 11:30 am. This is the first time I've traveled without my Lonely Planet guide (I'd ordered one, but it didn't arrive in time) so I had absolutely no idea what there was to do or see in Stockholm. So I immediately got on a computer at the hostel and began researching what I should do while I was there. I found directions to the tourist information center and quickly made my way in that direction. I grabbed some brochures and maps and bought a 24 hour "Stockholm Card" which gives you free access to museums and public transportation, then headed to the old part of town (the island of "Gamla Stan") where the Royal Palace (aka the Castle of Tre Kronor before it burned to the ground and was rebuilt) is located. Along the way I strolled by the Opera house, Jacob's Church, an outdoor ice skating rink and the National Museum. The island of Gamla Stan is one of the oldest parts of the city and the most beautiful. When crossing the bridge to access the island the first thing you see is the royal palace. The Royal Palace is the largest royal palace in the world with 608 rooms that are regularly used today. Next to the palace is Storkyrkan, the Royal Cathedral of Sweden. Inside the cathedral is the famous statue of "St. George and the Dragon" (which is now one of my favorite statues I've seen). After taking a look around inside the Cathedral I found a cafe across the street from the Nobel Prize Museum and sat down for something to eat and to look over all the brochures I'd gotten from the Tourist Information Center. By the time I left the cafe it was already dark. Normally I try to be back to my hostel by the time its dark when I'm traveling by myself, but since it was only 4:30pm (it gets really dark, really early) I finished wandering around the island before making my way back to the hostel. At the hostel I met an Aussie and a bunch of Belgians. We all ended up staying up until around 2 am chatting. I've decided that I like staying in hostels more than CouchSurfing. Not that I have a problem with couchsurfing, but you meet so many more people when you stay in hostels and you can choose who you want to hangout with or if you don't want to hangout you can be left alone and not feel obligated to mingle and talk.

Tuesday November 3rd was a beautiful, sunshiny, warm day. The perfect day to take a boat ride around all the islands that make up Stockholm, but I read the time schedule wrong so when I arrived at the docks there were no boats leaving :( I had planned to come back later to take a different boat, but I never made it back to the docks. Instead I traversed through the streets of Gamla Stan again in order to visit the island of Sodermalm where the famous (and free) "Stockholm Stadsmuseum" (city museum) is located. The museum was alright. One floor had old black and white photos of Stockholm back in the old days and the third floor had the Swedish film history. So there were tons of old props and costumes from Swedish films and around 12 small theater rooms each showing a different Swedish film with English subtitles. It would have been a good place to visit and hideout if the weather had been nasty, but since it was so nice out I didn't stay long to watch any of the movies (I needed to take advantage of the good weather while it lasted). The island of Sodermalm is located on a cliff that overlooks all of central Stockholm so I walked around the old ramparts and through the neighborhood which is described as the "coolest neighborhood jammed with up-and-coming boutiques and galleries and hip cafes and bars...trendy with indie cool and old-school shab" which I think sums it up pretty good. After finishing walking around the island I met up with one of the Belgian boys for a cafe and then we went ice skating at the outdoor ice skating rink in Kungstradgarden (I hadn't ice skated in a long time and never on an outdoor rink before, but it was a blast). On the way back to hostel we stopped at a grocery store to grab some supplies to make dinner at the hostel. That night I ended up staying up late again (around 3 am) talking with a whole new bunch of people (mainly Australians and a few Belgians I'd met the night before and a gorgeous blond haired blue-eyed Swedish hottie).

Wednesday November 4th was my last day in Sweden and by far the coldest day of my trip. It actually was snowing a good part of the day and the wind was howling. Good thing I hadn't used my 24 Stockholm Card yet. I spent the day popping in and out of museums and taking the public buses to get around thanks to the Stockholm pass. The first place I headed to was the island of Djurgarden in order to visit Skansen and the Vasamuseet. Skansen is actually the world's first "open-air museum" which means I was stuck walking around outside in the snow for the first part of the morning. It basically consists of a bunch of old Swedish structures like farm houses, stores, schools and houses from the late 1800s and early 1900s. It also has an aquarium and zoo with reindeer and other Swedish wildlife. I didn't spend to much time there because it was freezing cold, snowing and most of it was closed because I was visiting during the off-season (normally you can enter each of the buildings and look around to see what the insides looked like). After I finished looking around Skansen, I headed to the Vasamuseet (Vasa Ship Museum) which houses a huge war ship that was built in 1628 and sunk on her maiden voyage. This was my favorite museum I visited in Sweden. The boat was retrieved from the sea in 1961 and is almost entirely intact. It looks like it belongs in a "Pirates of the Caribbean" movie (but they'd have to rename it Pirates of the Baltic Sea). I spent a long time wandering around this museum. They had two theaters that showed different movies (one on theories surrounding why the Vasa sank and another on the history/resurrection/reconstruction of the ship). There were also six floors to the museum each showcasing different things, like items found on the ship, the history of the boat, what life was like for the sailors, who were the people who died when the ship went down (they actually found around 15 skeletons on the ship and they studied the bones to find out what type of life they'd led and they also did facial reconstructions to find out what they looked like...pretty interesting), etc. After the Vasa museum I headed to the National Museum. It was pretty weak for a "national" museum. It lacked a lot of really famous artists and artwork, but they were having an exhibition on Caspar David Friedrich which was quite excellent. I'd never seen his work before, but I really liked it and I think dad would too (you should check him out dad and maybe gets some prints for the house). He paints what they call "nature animated", but what I call scenery pictures. From there I visited the Moderna Museet on the island of Skeppsholmen which was having an exhibition of Salvador Dali's works. I'd never liked Dali's work before (mainly because I don't understand modern art very much), but each painting had explanations for the work and I am now a huge fan of Dali's work. The rest of the museum sucked, but Dali was awesome and well worth the visit. By the time I left the museum it was dark and cold, so I headed back to the hostel and hung out with a whole new group of people who were all Erasmus students studying in Amsterdam ("Erasmus" means that they are Europeans studying and going to college in countries that are not their native country, which is really common in Europe).

Thursday November 5th was a very long day of traveling. It started by walking to the train station first thing in the morning to take a long bus ride to the Stockholm airport, then a flight from Stockholm to Paris then the metro to the Paris train station, then a train from Paris to Poitiers, then a bus to Montmorillon and finally I had to walk 30 mins to my house. So my day of travelling started at 7am and finished around 10:30pm. Not a very fun day, but I did buy the Dan Brown book "Digital Fortress" so that helped make the voyage a little more bearable.

I'll post the pics and try to write again soon. XOXO.

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Norway Photos

Old viking cart that was buried with a person when they died. Vikingskiphuset (Viking Ship Museum)

Funeral boat. Vikingskiphuset (Viking Ship Museum)

Viking funeral boat. Vikingskiphuset (Viking Ship Museum)

Vigelandsparken (Vigeland Sculpture Park)

View of a hill in Oslo with Norwegian style houses from the Opera House

Cool yacht I spotted from outside the FRAM museum

View of the docks from the Akershus Fortress and Castle

View of the city from the Akershus Fortress and Castle

The Royal Palace

The Royal Palace (I hangout outside of enough royal palaces that I think eventually I have to meet some royalty)

The Royal Palace

Stortinget (its a government building and there was some sort of protest occurring outside of it, but I don't know what the protest was about, because I don't speak a lick of Norwegian)