Day 7
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| House in Skansen |
Is time ever flying by all of a sudden! It's still a little surreal that I'm actually here in Sweden. But I am and the city is a great place to visit. It does feel like I had a lot of time here and I have really. Rather than having an afternoon to myself I've had almost 2 full days aside from the city tour. I was a little concerned that I might have a lot of free time to fill. Because while I haven't had a lot of time in many of the places, I do feel like I've seen the vast majority of things while I was there. And an extra day and some in the cities would be a little dull unless you left the city. My backup plan was to bring a book over to the park but today's weather isn't so much sitting in the park reading weather sadly.
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| Street of old building in Skansen |
But I do have an actual plan for today. I'm going to visit Skansen. The best way to describe it is to call it Sweden's version of Fort Edmonton Park. I wasn't sure how long I would spend there but I stayed a lot longer than I expected. Partially because the place is huge, I think the map said 300,000 square meters. And partially because it was laid out like a bit of a maze. I ended up taking more than one wrong turn but usually found something new and interesting to see.
It was so large because they had all the buildings as well as a bit of a zoo, that contained Scandinavian animals. I'm always a little hit and miss with zoos because while I enjoy seeing the animals it always seems a little cruel to trap them in these tiny concrete enclosures.
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Bears trying to escape and have
a people snack |
The bears were desperate to get out. But much of that might be because they could smell all the delicious, fresh human meat. The bears were climbing all the trees which is something I've never seen before. It was a little disarming having a brown bear way up the tree above you. But he mostly just swatted at some birds and climbed back down without incident. But the other bears liked to climb this one dead tree and just perch at the top while staring at the tourists. They had animals everywhere in this place. They had a lot of typical farm animals and a lot of animals that visit and stay because it's a nice oasis for them. Like the geese. There were geese everywhere, and they all had goslings. As well as a rogue peacock who I saw in the Elk enclosure as well as wandering around the paths. Along with Elk, they had seals, the bears, reindeer, wolverines, wolves, and otters.
I did enjoy the day at Skansen, I am glad that I had the extra time to spend there.
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| Reindeer! |
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Bear climbing the tree, he's about
halfway up |
One thing I did notice on my wanderings in Stockholm was how many Dad's were wandering around with strollers, with no Mom's to be seen. I have learned that Sweden gives awesome parental leaves, including at least 2 months for the Dad's to take. Which they do take very good advantage of .
One disappointment with Sweden is the bathrooms. Of all the travels in Scandinavia Sweden is the only country that has no public bathrooms. Typically, in Europe there isn't a big supply of public bathrooms but even public locations had bathrooms that you had to pay for. They did have a lot more free standing facilities on the street that were available if you had the right coins. So it meant making sure I took advantage of the restaurants I visited.
Now I'm off to the hotel as we're meeting soon to board the ferry in a few hours. I'm curious to see how that is going to be. It is a 15 hour overnight ferry ride. It does take vehicles as well as passengers.
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| Ferry with the shopping area |
The ferry is an interesting place. It is a mini cruise ship. They have the main deck with shops and restaurants, as well as a kids area and the saddest casino I've ever seen. It's really just a bar with a single blackjack table and a dozen slot machines. And nobody was putting any money in. They have a theatre to do live broadway shows, they were doing Rent while I was on board. And they did have the sun deck up top for the smokers and to watch the progress of the boat.
The Stockholm-Helsinki route is popular. There are 4 dedicated ferries that go either from Stockholm to Helsinki or Helsinki to Stockholm every single night. As well as various flights. They have about 4 floors of cabins and while the ship was filled which meant about 2000 people it didn't feel crowded. Except for the dinner buffet, that was madness as apparently nobody had eaten in days is what that experience felt like.
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My swanky suite. There isn't
much else to see except the
tiny bathroom |
One thing that really surprises me is the size of the Baltic sea. I'll admit, I don't know much about the geography in this area (except that water is blue, thanks high school social studies!) but I expected more open water. The beginning of the trip, probably the first 4 or 5 hours was the ferry traveling through many smaller islands, many of which were inhabited, and there wasn't a lot of extra space for the ferry. By the time I was heading to bed we were in the middle of nowhere and all you could see was other ships in the sea. I did see the Viking ship heading to Helsinki a few times and a lot of ships heading south from the Helsinki direction. And when we did make it to Helsinki we were just right there, there aren't nearly as many islands around Finland, you just arrive all of a sudden.
The cabin on board is what I expected. And while it is small it's not really much smaller than some of the single hotel rooms I've been in. I do feel a little spoiled as there are 3 beds in here and I'm using one. In passing I've seen a few families in one room with small kids. Which usually means the kids are burning energy everywhere but in the room.
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| Baltic Sea Travels |
We did get exterior cabins so I could see where we were going and I have a lovely view to the south. Otherwise you get a view into the interior and look over the shops and restaurants. The ship reminds me of HUB mall at the University of Alberta, for those of you familiar with that building. And oddly enough, my cabin has a bit of a doritos smell.
And when I wake up I'll be approaching Helsinki, I'm curious to see how it fits in with Scandinavia as it's technically not a part of Scandinavia. I'm guessing it'll have more Russian influence if the cyrillic translations on everything in the room are any sort of indication!
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| The Serenade, my home for the night |
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