Whirlwind Stockholm!

Today was perhaps our most fast-paced day of the trip thus far.  After a bountiful breakfast at the Marriott, we all piled into the tour bus for a trip to City Hall, where we admired the intricate gold leaf mosaic Gold Room and the majestic main hall which serves as home to the Nobel Prize dinner.  From there we hopped over to the Vasa Ship Museum.  The Vasa was a "royal ship" class warship completed in 1628, which sank to the bottom of the Stockholm harbor within minutes of its launch.  The effort taken to raise the ship (which was preserved by the brackish water of the harbor) was an amazing story of engineering, almost as compelling as the ship's fate.  Next on the list was lunch at the restaurant at the Tower of Kaknästornet, which is still used today by Teracom as a sending/receiving tower. The afternoon was filled with a visit to the Millesgaarden sculpture garden, an exterior tour and peak inside the Royal Palace Chapel, and more detailed walking tour of Old Town - And the brevity of that last sentence does a tremendous disservice to what we saw in those places, but hopefully the pictures below will assist with recreating the impression they made!

The main room of City Hall; site of the annual Nobel Prize dinner

A stunning gold leaf tile mosaic in the Gold Room of City Hall.

The courtyard of City Hall.

The Vasa as seen from the stern.

View from our lunch spot.

Carl Milles sculpture at Millesgaarden.

The opulence of the Royal Palace Chapel.

The unique character of Old Town.