Day 13 Thursday 29 August

A comfortable night, followed by mermaid food in the cellar. They have Skagen mix here as well as gravlax and one type of herring which is still enough to keep my hair and skin silky like a seal. Poor Vern, I hope I don’t smell like one. Given the prices of food here I got back onto making a little sandwich for our takeaway, although the breads were a little limited for making a sub. Fruit was chopped and yoghurts in a jug – I think deliberately so guests don’t do what I was trying to do! Never mind, I am up for a challenge and did a ham and cheese sandwich mix on a good rye bread, which was quite adequate. I also packed two bottles of tap water for our days excursion to ease the budget.

There were a few showers this morning so we took the opportunity to rest our sore muscles for a couple of hours and I actually blasted two days of blogs that I was behind on. This is the first one I am typing real time on the day for a bit! Still behind on posting, however the writing is more important. Vern had washing to do and a bit of research and we then finalised our day – which was to go to city hall and do an English tour. There is also a tower there to climb with great views so that was a challenge Vern cannot resist.

We walked the 20 minutes across town at leisure enjoying the old town and seeing a little bit of the palace band on the way. While churches dominate cities in Southern Europe, in Scandinavian capitals, City Halls seem to be the most impressive buildings, celebrating humanism and the ideal of people working together in community. Built in 1923, this is still a functioning city hall and is made of eight million bricks and boasts 19 million chips of gilt mosaic!

The city hall tour was very interesting, the bland brick exterior providing no clue to the colourful and grand inside. The tour commenced in the Italian piazza inspired courtyard – banquet hall called the Blue room. This is where the Nobel prize awards are held and the general public can rent this hall for weddings and functions and enjoy the outside park like surrounding next to the water. Inside this hall is the largest organ in Scandinavia and the floors are lined in Swedish marble which is a white green blue mix.

The next room we visiting was the city council chamber which was sumptuous with velvet and a beautifully painted ceiling decorated in typical old Swedish style like a Viking longhouse, or like an upside down ship frame.

We then passed through the gallery of the prince which is a hall lined with frescoes painted by Prince Eugene before we entered the glittering and gilded Neo Byzantine style Golden Hall, which is a second ball room after banquets etc that are held in the blue room. This grand hall as the name suggests is covered in gold mosaic (German artist) and reminiscent of the Church of Spilled Blood or St. Marks – albeit not religious pictures. The main picture shows the Queen of Lake Malaren (signifyingNorway) and her watchful eye over proceedings and the rest of the world.

After the city hall tour we used the free wifi and nice clean toilets before confirming our climb up the 340 ft tower. There are 365 steps up but you can take an elevator half way up, and walk the 159 remaining steps which are made up of alternating sloping ramps and then steps. OK, that sounded like a fair compromise so up we went. It is the most attractive tower I have been up with pretty brickwork inside the stairwell. It also wasn’t too claustrophobic, or steep, or twisting with tight dizzying curves.

Half way up is a 25ft statue of St Erik that was meant to go all the way to the top, but plans changed so he remains in the hall with a few mates. Up the top there are 9 bells, and a smaller statue of Erik and the other patron saints, all facing their respective churches. The view up the top was so worth it even though the day was not as spectacular as yesterday. And yes we walked all the way down, giving the lift a miss in order to work those old knees some more. I was rather proud of myself as I didn’t even get out of breath or have to stop all the way up (well one minor pause).

After a few more photos around the area we walked into centrum again to find a telecommunications shop Vern had found on the internet. Unbelievably they do not sell prepaid – only contracts so we are still without a data sim for iPad. Shaking our heads we cant fathom it, so this is big travel tip. Get something from a country you know has good roaming like the UK…. because Scandinavia is rubbish in this regard.

We were actually in the central rail station which has lots of shops and a food hall, so we gave in and bought a coffee and a traditional sweet yeast bun with cardamom to share (very nice) and headed back to our side of Gamla Stan to catch a river cruise. Unfortunately we just missed the last sailing, but will try and fit it in tomorrow. Our itinerary plan was to also do the statue park, but on more research here it looked a little bit out of town on the other side and time consuming to get to, so we decided to give it a miss.

So home we went, via another jetty to confirm tomorrows transport times, then had a quick change and headed out for dinner. We were maybe going to do Vegetarian again but sniffed out a nice place just around the corner. As we only had half a sandwich for lunch and a big day we were well ready for dinner. It was double the price of the vegetarian but still moderate for Stockholm.

Vern had a special burger and fries complete with bacon, cheese and truffle mayo and I had the Iberian pork with chilli avocado and salad. My pork was amazing and the juiciest and most flavoursome grilled pork I have ever had. It almost popped like a juicy prawn when bitten into. We also had a couple of very nice ciders – one an Austrian pear and apple mix, the other a French brut style. It’s a tough life I know…