I arrived in Stockholm at around 2 PM 3/29/14. Towards the beginning of March one of my friends from highschool asked me if I wanted to meet up with him in Stockholm because he was planning on going there during his spring break while studying in Russia. It just so happened that his trip aligned perfectly with the Sea Battle trip. I met up with Colin shortly after arriving. He showed me around the city a bit and then we went to old Stockholm near the Royal Palace is. He found a great little restaurant that serves “Viking Burgers” and they were actually comparable to US prices! It was a great dinner and only the second time I had gone out to eat since going to Trondheim. He had to catch a flight early the next morning so we didn’t hang out for too much longer.

When I got back to my hostel I met up with a few friends who happened to book the same place as me. I ended up hanging out with them for a lot of the trip. We went to the Skansen museum and the Vasa museum the next day. Skansen is a big outdoor museum and zoo that shows what life was like in Sweden throughout history. They had some really cool recreations of old villages spread out over a huge area. The Vasa museum shows a ship that was commissioned by the king of Sweden around 1626. It was supposed to be the flagship for the Swedish navy, but the king pushed the ship builders to make it too large. It became too tall and rolled over soon after leaving the docks on its maiden voyage. It sunk in Stockholm bay. In the 1950s it was rediscovered and they were eventually able to recover and preserve it. The Wikipedia page about the Vasa is really interesting:

The first night of the official Sea Battle program was 3/30/14 so we moved to the hostel they booked for us. It was a huge hostel downtown and it was filled with students going on the Sea Battle! Our ship left early in the afternoon on 4/1/14 so I didn’t have much time left to explore Stockholm. The city was really cool and there was still a lot more left to see. I am going to have to go visit there again! As the ship was pulling out of Stockholm it actually reminded me a lot of northern Minnesota. The channels we were taking to the ocean had rough rocky shores with pine forests much like the lakes in Minnesota. We really didn’t have to go far outside of the city for the landscape to be dominated by beautiful forests.

See part 3 for the ship and Riga!