Stockholm! I know I've already been there, but my family hasn't, and the two days we spent there count as our first stop on this tour. I won't repost what I've already shown. Just some new things, like:
The Ericsson Globe:
This is the national indoor arena of Sweden. Currently the world's largest hemispherical building with a diameter of 110 meters. It has a seating capacity for 16,000 spectators.
The sphere is not just an arena, but it represents the sun in the "Sweden Solar System", which is the world's largest scale model of the Solar System.
Other globes representing the planets and various other small bodies, relative to the size of the globe "sun" are spread out in Sweden in a relational distance from it as well.
The Earth model (65cm in diameter) can be found at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, 7.6km from the Globe. I will try to get a couple of pictures of the inner planets during my next visit to Stockholm.
As you can see, if you are crazy enough, you can take a ride in a glass dome elevator to the top. We were not.
The following are photos of some new, strange or old things from Stockholm that I haven't shared yet.
Saluhall with all it's very fresh produce, meat and fish.
St James' Church.
A female castle guard.
Entrance hall of the Castle.
Sergels Torg, which doesn't look that impressive by day, but the night photo I found on the internet does.
The Summer House in Djurgården, where the King used to stay for hunting.
The Parlement, Riksdagen.
Very weird statue. Thought it was a street performer at first!
A random tree.
From Stockholm, we boarded the Viking Line Ferry and travelled over night to our next destination: Helsinki, Finland.
The view from the ferry berthed. The amusement park is Gröna Lund, on Djurgården island.
Stockholm city itself is built on 14 islands. 30% of the city consists of waterways and another 30% is made up of parks. The Stockholm archipelago consists of over 30,000 islands and islets! We spent several hours passing them all to and from Stockholm. This is a shot of us just leaving the last of the biggest islands behind.
Suomenlinna Sea Fortress just outside of Helsinki. It was built while Finland was still a part of Sweden, before the Finnish war in which Sweden and Russia fought and the eastern third of then Sweden became the Grand Duchy of Finland within the Russian Empire. During World War I, Finland fought and achieved independence from Russia and Suomenlinna once again changed ownership.
Helsinki.
Sunset on the Baltic.
Helsinki itself was a really nice city. It's "tourist" area isn't very big and the Russian history and influence can easily be seen and heard all over. Here are some of the highlights of our visit.
A great street market, where every stall is set up every morning and dismantled each night, but each of them accepts credit cards or even foreign currency! Made for tourists.
Helsinki Train station.
The House of Estates.
Helsinki Cathedral.
One of the few cathedrals I've come across that allows photography inside.
Uspenski Cathedral. Very Russian.
And very close to the South African embassy!
A guard that I at first thought was a strange statue. He didn't move a hair, which is probably more Russian than Swedish, since the Swedish guards smile and nod at people.
Temppeliaukio Church. This church is built into rock and lit by natural light. The dome cap is made of spun copper wire. The rough, almost unworked surfaces of the rock apparently gives great acoustics and the church is a popular concert venue.
Suomenlinna Fort. Pretty in Pink.
Suomenlinna Fort Church.
View of the fort's old walls.
View from the fort to the Baltic Ocean.
No European/Scandinavian city will be complete without some weird, funky statues. So here they are:
Turtles at Market Square.
Aleksis Kivi close by the Train Station, looking a bit depressed.
A carved tree stump.
It is very difficult to get a picture of some of the statues without a bird on the head.
A woman raising her hands in the air like she just don't care.
Even the dog is wondering why he's holding the sword by the blade.
The three smiths. John, Jack and Peter Smith. Kidding.
And lastly, Havis Amanda. This statue of a mermaid leaving her element is suppose to symbolize Helsinki's rebirth.
Trip to and from Helsinki: around 1200km (1000 via ferry) and four days.
Trip still left to show: 4980km (reasonably accurate reading from the Motorhome) and 15 days.
Stay tuned.
Njoy!
When are you travelling again?
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