Why do I bring this up? Because museum prices in Stockholm are just as high. Expect to pay at least $15 to visit a museum in Stockholm, and possibly $20 or more. So my main piece of advice is to buy the Stockholm Card. A 3-day card will cost you a bit over $100, but not only does it include free admission (one time only) to nearly every museum in the city, it also includes free use of all of the mass-transit options (metro, tram, bus, and even some of the ferries).
Unfortunately for me, I bought just the 3-day transit pass which was much cheaper, thinking I would want to visit many museums (I usually don't). But Stockholm has a number of museums that looked quite interesting and if you are going to be there and like museums, the Stockholm Card is a massive bargain.
There was one museum that I HAD to go to though, and that was the Vasa Museum on Djurgarden island. It is the most-visited museum in all Scandinavia and displays the only 17th-century ship that is almost fully preserved. The Vasa was a Swedish warship that finished construction in 1628, and due a faulty design sunk barely a nautical mile into its maiden voyage. It lay lost in the harbor for 333 years before being found and recovered. The Wikipedia article makes for interesting reading on the loss, sinking, re-discovery, raising, and preservation of the ship.
Like a lot of folks, I found the museum fascinating and spent a couple hours there (maybe more). Unfortunately, the museum is a bit dark and the flash on my little camera wasn't up to lighting that much space, so I didn't get a lot of great pictures. But some of the better ones are in this post.
This is looking down the hull from the front of the ship towards the rear.
The decorations on the ship are incredible. This is at the rear of the ship, and what you can't tell from this picture is all of those figures are different. They all have different faces, different poses, etc. The craftsmanship is incredible and you have to wonder how they built all this in just 2 years.
The picture below if the very rear of the ship, at the top.
A bit closer view of the rear, a bit below the picture above.
This is a look at the top deck from the rear of the ship.
A wider picture from the side, where you can see the cannon ports.
This is recreation of one of the officers rooms at the back of the ship. Again, as you can see, the museum is a bit dark in a number of places.
This is a cool model of the ship in a cut-away view with miniature crew-members going about their tasks. I had to shoot from this angle because there were constantly people lined up in front of the model and this was only angle I could where I could get most of it in one shot.
Lastly, I wanted to include a couple of paintings that are on display in the museum.
This is a painting of King Gustavus Adolphus, who commissioned the Vasa.
And this is a painting of what the ship would have looked like under way. It's a dark painting, and the low light in the museum didn't help. But I still like it. Click the image to see it full sized if you would like.
This is the end of my posts on Stockholm. I will throw all of the decent pictures up on my photo site soon. But between the rain on the first day and spending so much time in the Vasa Museum on the second, I only have about 30 total that I think are halfway decent.
On the last day I caught the Arlanda Express train out to the Arlanda airport (Stockholm is served by 3 different airports, the one used by Ryanair and other discount carriers is a LONG ways away). From there I had a quick hour-long flight to Helsinki for the last city of my trip. I'll cover Helsinki in the next post or two.
Have a great day!
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