Stockholm - Part II

Trying to sample local dishes while travelling with young children is a daunting task, not the least because my kids are picky with food, but also because they are usually quite knackered by meal times and not in the mood to indulge in Mamma and Baba's request for them to trying something new.  We had bad luck with food when we were in the Loire Valley, and after 2 days, we decided to port Ju's milk with us everywhere we went, and Sophie was surviving more or less on bread (plus a lot of snacks).  In Stockholm, we tried our luck again, and we were mildly more successful.       

Reindeer meat - Tastes like liver, in case you are wondering

Alright! Back to our adventures in Stockholm.

Ready for another day of hard-core walking and sight-seeing?  See the enthusiasm on Ju's face. 

Entrance to the park in Djugarden

Can you spot Sophie?

Djugarden is one of the islands near the Stockholm city center, and is packed full of sights and places to visit.  We highly recommend the Junibacken, a children's museum devoted to children's literature, especially those written by Astrid Lindgren.  Characters and settings in the books are brought to life, and the place was crawling (literally) with toddlers and pre-schoolers, exploring every nook and cranny.  It's like Disneyland, but smaller and more intimate. 

The kids had a field day fiddling with the buttons, drawers, levers, doors, etc, in the miniature houses, but of course Sophie's favourite was....  

Pippi Longstocking's house!  

It was amusing to see her run around, pointing out where Mr. Nilsson the monkey sleeps (in Pippi's closet), pictures of Pippi's father before he drowned (yeah, Pippi has a rather depressing background), Pippi's collection of hats, etc.  Everything had been brought to life exactly the way they were depicted in the Pippi stories she had read.  

It's the frog inside the toilet!!

Cleaning Pippi's horse.  She took the task very seriously.  

Ju has no inkling what the place was, or what we were doing, but he was having the time of his life nevertheless.  Here, he is happily managing his own cafe and punching the cash machine.  A true towkay (Hokkien for boss) in the making.

More toys!!  

OK I forgive you, Mamma, for dragging me out of bed so early in this morning.

We love Stockholm!

Our last museum stop was the Vasamuseet, and this is probably the number one attraction in Stockholm.  The warship Vasa sank on her maiden voyage in 1628, and laid in the Baltic Sea near the harbours of Stockholm for 350+ years before it was finally salvaged in the 1960's.  Due to the brackish waters and heavy mud and silt in the Baltic Sea, the ship is one of the finest, if not only, preserved 17th-century warship in the world.  

Her story is fascinating: She was built with, not one, but two, gun decks, 64 guns and 300 soldiers, and meant to sail to Poland to intimidate the Polish, and to show the might of the Swedish army.  However, the ship was built too high and too narrow (probably to satisfy the King's demands to make it the best, the biggest and meanest warship ever seen).  So, 20 minutes after her grand send-off, she simply toppled to her left and sank, to the shock of everyone witnessing her voyage from the harbour.  Because it was such a massive structure, it was impossible to raise it with the technology of that time.  And so it sat shamefully alone in the bottom of the sea for 350 years.   

The museum was built around the ship once it was salvaged.  From the top-most floor (5th), you are just at a level slightly above the upper deck.   

A model of the Vasa in all its glory on the day it was launched.  The museum recreated the colours after painstaking research.  

The back of the ship, carved with hundreds of statues of mermaids, Roman gods, soldiers, etc

Here is what is looks like today

The upper deck.  There was apparently only 2 latrines on board, and you can see one of them in the lower right hand corner (the tiny thing that looks like a garbage bin).     

 Here was the problem: The ballast in the bottom of the ship were insufficient to balance the height of the ship, which was much taller than usual because it had 2 gun decks instead of one.  

Sweden is famous for quite a few things - Volvo, ABBA, H&M, and Ikea.  Sorry Kau Fu Chai, but Ikea is more important than Volvo for us.  It was there for us with every move we made.  (Plus we can buy many more IKEA pieces for the price of one Volvo).  So, we made the pilgrimage to where it all started - the very first IKEA store. 

And after this, we shall kiss the ground for this is the mothership....

However, I am disappointed to report that the mothership is exactly the same as the IKEA stores everywhere else we've been.  There were no special pieces that we could not find back home, no special treats for those who had successfully made the pilgrimage.  The Swedish meatballs at the cafe were also mediocre.  :(  Nevertheless, I have always enjoyed IKEA outings, and this one was no different.