Stockholm, Sweden

Posted on April 27, 2024  •  15 minutes  • 3143 words

This was a last minute trip, as I wasn’t sure I wanted to fit it in and we were LOVING Helsinki. But never one to turn down an adventure, I decided 5 days before to book the tickets. It would be fun, Dan could use a couple kid-free days and why not go explore another city for an afternoon?

Check-in was incredibly easy. I entered my conformation number into the kiosk and out popped all our tickets. They were credit card sized and we each had one. They allowed us entry onto the ship, to the breakfast buffet I prepaid and mine also had the room key on it. Then two more popped out for our buffet dinner entry. It hurt to pay 40 euros/adult for the buffet dinner, as I’m not a big eater nor heavy drinker when I’m solo with the kids, but we were going for convenience. And I figured Ben would do his share of fish consumption to make up for it a bit. We gave hugs to Dan, scanned ourselves through and started down the very long walkway here where we saw Dan below walking back home.

And another photo Dan took of our ship all ready to go.

I made the decision to get an inside cabin so we could get a couple nights sleep without 4am morning light. The size was no surprise, but it was totally fine for us.

After dropping off our stuff, we went straight to the kid area. It wasn’t big, but it was going to work just fine. Ball pit, wooden train set, under-table soccer and plenty of other little things to keep them busy. I found a chair and started reading to catch up on some of Ben’s series.

And I had a window with views, couldn’t complain.

We were starting out and would be weaving through the archipelago. It wasn’t easy, but I convinced the kids to come outside and check out the views. It was even more magical seeing all the little islands than I had imagined.

Not windy at all.

It’s hard not to imagine the peacefulness and tranquility of staying on one of these islands in one of the adorable little cabins. Boat or kayak there, no connection to the outside world…just books, a fire and fishing. Okay, maybe not one where the cruise ships pass by, but some further away. Although, I could image the freezing-ness of them and assume these are summer only places. Some islands just had one cabin and connection is only via boat. Some even looked like a one room cabin. I was imagining another trip to do sometime while the kids ran around on the top deck…wide open for them.

It was not warm up there, so we headed in to drop off my jacket before the buffet. The kids were very curious why there were SO many people with fully loaded carts in the duty free area. I explained about the lack of taxes one pays on international waters and they wanted to check it out. 90% of the store was dedicated to alcohol and beauty supplies, but would it even be a duty free if they didn’t sell giant Toblerones?

I did sample a whiskey, no idea why!, and a spiked lemonade. So kids didn’t feel left out, the whiskey spot had chocolate for the non-drinkers. No purchases, even though the kids really wanted the mentos, and we headed to the buffet. We had an assigned table and I attempted to keep the kids’ craziness in check. It was huge and SO many options. Sam saw the cheese area and wanted to go straight there, but I was trying to explain about how you can try a little of a lot to figure out what you like best…and you have to get veggies. Ben missed the memo about the veggies, but I sent him back to get some after.

Max went heavy on the asparagus salad with fries. On our second trip up together he loaded up on salmon (okay we both did).

Sam got a huge array. He pretty much did his own thing and didn’t want to stand in the line that I was in. He was the first to find the salmon and of course Grandpa’s beets…and he wanted 2 plates. He also got a shot glass of some fish with cream on top and fish eggs. (See middle of Ben’s plate). He gave it a double side thumbs up and then slowly rotated them straight up to show ‘THIS IS THE BEST EVER!’ Ben wasn’t a huge fan and Sam gladly ate Ben’s.

For my first pass, I went for lots of the salads and ended up with a meatball that Max changed his mind on.

And then what they were all waiting for…dessert! Lots of options, but we all opted for the ice cream with tons of topping options!

After dinner we went back to the kid area, then to the lounge/bar for kids bingo. Not normal bingo, but we figured it out. The kids had the worst cards (numbers were displayed on a screen, so not lost in translation). At the end they said anyone who hadn’t won could come up and out of 4 kids, 2 were mine. They got candy, so they were happy…but not thrilled they never won. It was late for us, but I wanted another view from outside.

We headed back to the room and this was on the wall at the back staircase. The back of the Vasa and the woman with her head in her hands in embarrassment. I tried to explain it to the kids, but ultimately said it would all make more sense tomorrow. Back in the room, we set up the beds, brushed teeth, read and went to bed easily with no light interference.

Just as planned, we slept in! Breakfast was from 8-10am Finnish time and right around 9am I was thinking I was going to have to wake kids up so we didn’t miss the buffet. It’s like they sensed it and started stirring in their beds. No assigned seating for breakfast and Sam found us a window table.

Kids were again so excited with the possibilities. Unfortunately, there was no fresh fruit…just sweetened fruit cocktail, so I told the kids they needed some veggies on their plates. Sam’s veggies…pickles!

No surprise with Ben’s plate…meat and salmon and 1 tomato. To be fair, his second trip had more tomatoes. Good thing I had a central plate of cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes.

From looking at the map, we traveled through the Swedish archipelago for hours. Anytime I looked out the window, there was another amazing looking island calling for me to visit! Finished up with breakfast and headed outside again.

My favorite island. It has a few small open faced huts at, what looks like, a campsite. No other structures, just a wild island of trees and rocky shores.

Close up view of the campsite.

It’s probably 9:30am (10:30am Finnish time) and the sun is SO high. I guess it’s been up for 5 hours.

As we got closer to Stockholm, the islands got more ‘populated’, but still no bridges.

We were excited to disembark and explore if you can’t tell.

We had 6 hours in Stockholm and I had it planned out so well! I wanted to see so much, show them so much. First mistake, have a plan when going to a city alone with 3 kids. We were on the street outside the terminal and I wanted to take a small boat over to the island where the Vasa Museum was. There was so much construction, that I couldn’t get us on the right road to walk to the boat without walking through parking lots and streets with no sidewalks. We opted for a taxi that attempted to scam us royally and only ended up getting a big scammed. Still annoying. We got dropped off by the museum and got in pretty quickly. Again, kids free!

Dan, Ben and I had been to Sweden 8 years ago with friends when Dan and Nick had a conference that we all tagged along to and then added a week long bike trip to after.

On the previous trip we had come to this museum and we were all blown away by seeing the Vasa back then, but I felt the same shock/amazement/awe that I felt as if I’d never seen it before. It’s almost hard to believe. Seriously, 98% of this ship was at the bottom of the harbor for 300+ years and look at it now!

Okay, a bit of backstory. In the 17th century, as Sweden is trying to display themselves as a major power and expand their military, the King of Sweden commissioned this ship to be built. But not just any ship, a ship that would tout their military prominence and help gain victory in the war with Poland. It was one of the most heavily armed ships of the times. It had 2 canon decks, one that was not in the original design, but added later contributing to the unstableness of the ship. It was painted fiercely with golds and reds. To sum it up, it was as if the US Navy was visited by Pimp My Ride and the NRA when they were building the biggest ship of our time.

A 1:10 scale model of the ship.

It sets sail to all the pomp and circumstances one would expect for a ship of this caliber would have. Then while still in view of the port, less than 15 minutes into it’s maiden voyage, a gust of wind hits the sails and water starts pouring in through the open canon hatches (that were open for a salute, probably to the king). It sunk within 5 minutes right off the harbor. It’s heart breaking, thinking of the years of blood, sweat and tears that went into building it and for all those people to watch their work sink, due to bad decisions made by ‘upper management’, not to mention the lives lost.

Some of the canons were salvaged after the sinking, but the rest of the ship was left at the bottom of the harbor for about 300 years. It lay upright in brackish waters, that preserved it really well. And when I say really well, I mean astonishingly well.

It’s so hard to believe. This ship, not a replica nor a few pieces of this ship, 98% of THIS SHIP was submerged in sea water for 300+ years.

There was a whole area where they showed how they surfaced the ship drilling/water blasting tunnels under the ship, feeling wires under and then slowly lifting with the pontoon boats on the sides. The plexiglass made photos impossible, but it was really cool to see and much easier to explain it to the kids with a visual. My really bad photo.

But I did get a great photo of the lego rendition of lifting it up. More on the lego area later.

The timing worked to watch a 25 minute video in English, that was more in-depth than the youtube one I had found a few days ago. The theater was right by an lego exhibit/interactive area and I almost lost the kids attention, but the seed had been planted in Sam’s mind and sort of made it hard to get him to really see all there was to see in the museum. Ben on the other hand was rivetted with it all. He looked at everything there was to see and got mad at me when I was going to fast. Technically I wouldn’t say I was going to fast, I was just trying to stay between all the kids.

Even as Sam asked every three minutes if we could go to the lego area, he was still doing some drawings. Max was just walking around at my side asking for food like a little puppy. But a very cute puppy.

There was an exhibit that showed how the ship could sail different directions even if the wind was going in one direction. Ben found one of the ships and spent a LOT of time drawing it. Numerous times I got in trouble when I asked if he was ready…aka…Sam has taken off, we have to go find him. Finally, I just left Ben there and wandered the floor with Sam and Max.

The final drawing, although he said it still needed more work but ran out of time. Aka, Mom rushed me.

There were about 3 levels above where the ship would have sat at sea level and as you went up, you could get different views of the ship until you were high enough to see onto the top deck.

Sam just couldn’t bring his mind to think of anything except playing with Legos, but I did get him up to the top level. I wanted to just stare and take it all in a bit, as Ben did also, but I took the 5 minutes I got and was happy with that. Sam really wanted to take the elevator down by himself, from the 7th floor down to ground level. Yes, this is what was going to calm Sam down. The rest of us walked down much faster as the elevator stopped at each floor due to so many people trying to ride it. I pretended that I wasn’t waiting for him to walk off and was just looking at the ship with the other two when he walked out and straight over to us. We are now at the level of the bottom of the ship and can look up to the underside. Max and I did one of our favorite photos.

At this level, you could pretty much walk laps around the ship, which is what Max and I did. The other two were more into drawing.

I finally said it was Lego time and we headed that way. It was cool! Scenes of the Vasa being built, scenes of it being brought to the surface, other ships and plenty more!

And it was fun seeing the same sails from my Black Seas Barracuda set that Santa brought me when I was 9 years old.

The kids were more interested in building than looking, but that worked out just fine.

We spent some time building and then headed out for lunch. It was drizzling, but we made it the few blocks to the restaurant we ate at when we were here before. Sam was loving asking Ben all the time ‘do you like this or that as much as you did when you were here before?" Lunch was fine, not great, but it was the closest place and we needed food.

On the walk over the bridge, Ben and I took a recreation photo, minus Dan.

We took our time walking along the water towards the old town.

Plenty of cool buildings to look at on our right and ships on our left.

This was a walk and area that Ben and I strolled around plenty on our previous trip. As we walked, I went into a bit of a daze thinking about so many good memories of that trip popping up.

And so going through the old photos later of Ben as a little munchkin.

We crossed the bridge to the old town being blasted by wind; the old town is his own island. We climbed up a bit to where the Royal Palace and attempted to get a photo of the kids.

We zigzagged through the narrow little cobblestone streets, assuming we’d somehow end up in the center plaza and we did.

Added bonus to the cute plaza…an awesome water fountain.

The boat wasn’t leaving for 2.5hrs, but I was already on my google maps thinking about the walk back to the ship. My fear of being late was magnified with knowing that the ship would depart without us! I just couldn’t feel totally okay strolling around without giving us a huge buffer. I was really trying to not race back to the boat but the freezing weather wasn’t helping us. We had to try out Swedish gelato and found a place in the plaza and then went for a walk.

Max opted to not get the ice cream because he wanted to have it on the ship after dinner. Ben and Sam both went with the lemon and were not fans as there were little bits of rind in it, probably for extra flavor. This helped dramatically with them sharing with Max. They argued that they shared so much that they should also be able to have it after dinner with him. More small streets, but we hit a crowded one that had lots of shops. We even popped in one to get Dan a shirt.

Boat leaving in 1.5 hours and we had a 20 minute walk back to the boat. I hit my ‘fear of being late limit’ and we started the walk back. Never in too much of a rush to not take photos of a tall buttressed rock wall.

The kids thought it would be fun to run to make it look like we were going to miss our boat.

We boarded, with PLENTY of time, and headed to the kids area for a bit before dinner. Kids were now buffet pros and only Max would walk through the line with me. Ben got a little of everything on his first round, including a lamb that was served as a small portion in a bowl. By the end of dinner, we had each had 5 bowls.

Window seat this time!

I let all the kids get small ice creams and then back to the play room. At least I had a view of the (in two hours) sunset.

Another great night sleep, a bit of the same for breakfast and we were an hour out from Helsinki.

Got a view of Suomenlinna as the kids spent every last second they could in the kid area.

I played a few rounds of the soccer under the table game with Ben, packed up relatively easily and disembarked. We walked to the Kauppahalli to get salmon for dinner. Then the tram home with a celebratory duty free mento.

At times it was a hard trip, but the time alone at the Vasa Museum made it all worth it! Ben was so engaged and Max still brings up the ship a week later. We had fun with the buffets and I got lots of reading time with the kid area. However, with the limited time and the strict departure time, I have decided cruises are not for me. I wanted more time, but feel anxious about getting back.