We woke to find ourselves already cruising through the Stockholm archipelago, the series of over 20000 islands formed by glacial regression that protect the Swedish capital city. I had been looking forward to this part of the cruise as I’d heard it was stunningly beautiful but the weather was not particularly good and because of the angle we were approaching along with our aft position on the ship light was an issue too. Things would be much more pleasant during our departure but for now I satisfied myself with only a few photographs of the landscape around Stockholm and some of the outlying structures we could occasionally see.

It was very easy to tell when we were closer to the city of Stockholm itself as the number of buildings along the shorelines increased significantly. There wasn’t a lot of traditional architecture on display but we knew we’d be hitting the old part of the city during our day there so that wasn’t an issue either. What architecture we did see was generally fairly modern and not particularly appealing, although there were plenty of bold colours on show, something very typical of Nordic countries in general.

The Crown Princess cruise ship eventually docked opposite the Gröna Lund amusement park which looked interesting, if compact. We’d not be visiting that on our day in Sweden but as we’d love to go back to the city at some point I wouldn’t rule it out on some future occasion.

The Blue Hall

We weren’t the only people wanting to look around the building and so initially had to gather together inside the Blue Hall (or Blå Hallen). As you can probably tell from the photographs there isn’t a lot of what you might consider blue in the hall. The architect, Ragnar Östberg, had initially planned to decorate the hall in blue but changed his mind after seeing the bricks; the name, however, stuck. The Blue Hall serves as the location for the Nobel Prize banquet every year.

Tour groups were permitted to start their tours at staggered intervals for obvious reasons and we only had to wait a few minutes before proceeding from the Blue Hall and up the stairs to the next level of Stockholm’s City Hall.

Council Chambers

The City Hall was originally designed to be used by the city’s politicians and it still serves that function today. The Council Chambers are where the Stockholm Municipal Council meet to discuss business. The meetings are open to the public and to journalists, both of whom have allocated seating to permit proceedings to be viewed.

The chamber gallery ceiling was designed to resemble a Viking building because, well, it’s Sweden.

From the Council Chambers we proceeded through a number of rooms including the Oval Room and the Prince’s Gallery on our way towards the Golden Hall.

Golden Hall

Clearly the most impressive of the large spaces in City Hall was the Golden Hall. Following the Nobel Prize banquet each year a ball is hosted in this huge room. Mosaic design covers every surface, made from over 18 million pieces of gold and glass.

The mosaic images depict elements from Swedish history, the largest piece of work being reserved for the far wall from the entrance where a large personification of Stockholm as a woman (The Queen of Lake Mälaren) gazes down on the rest of the world.

Outside City Hall

We then exited City Hall through the gift shop and inner courtyard. With about ten minutes to kill as we waited for members of our tour group to use the toilet facilities or peruse the gift shop in more detail than we had I wandered out towards Lake Mälaren to take some photos of Stockholm and City Hall from that vantage point.

While the City Hall hadn’t been the focus point for our day in Stockholm it was still a very interesting place from a functional and architectural perspective and it’s well worth a visit if you’re in Sweden’s capital. More information about the building can be found here: The City Hall.

The museum itself was built in 1988 following the drying and treating of the raised vessel over the previous twenty seven years.

Inside the museum the impressive ship can be seen in all its glory on four levels of walkways around the vessel. What is incredible is just how intact the Vasa is. With the exception of the masts the main decomposition that took place on the ship underwater was the rusting away of smaller metal pieces such as bolts for the timbers. The timber itself didn’t suffer anywhere near as much damage as the water in which the ship sank could not support the microscopic life that would otherwise have thrived on it.

The highly-decorated aft of the vessel and bowsprit were particularly nice to see and brought to mind any of the main ships in the Pirates of the Caribbean series of movies.

On each of the levels away from the Vasa were recovered items from the ship along with information about it. The ship had been over-designed on the wishes of the king, Gustavus Adolphus. Intended to be the flagship of a squadron of ship based in the Swedish Archipelago the ship was fitted with 64 guns but was dangerously top heavy. With nobody apparently willing to tell the king that the design was not a smart one the ship set sail before a watching crowd only to catch a light breeze and tip over enough to allow water to flood in through its lower gun ports beyond the ship’s capacity to compensate.

Taking photographs in the Vasa Museum is not the easiest thing in the world. There’s nothing stopping you from taking photos of the ship – as you can tell – but there’s a challenge because of the lighting. I’m never particularly happy taking photos at high ISO because of the noise this generates but there’s no other option in this case. High ISO and wide open lens allowed me to get shots at a high enough speed to not be too blurred from hand held pictures but some of the images are as slow as 1/6th of a second which is worryingly long; that’s even with deliberate underexposing to try to get a little more speed in the shutter. That long exposure coupled with the high ISO and the lighting in the museum then gave everything a very warm feel so in post processing I’ve sharpened a bit and kept noise reduction low because I prefer the noise and sharpness to something too soft. To counter the colour I reduced the temperature by a couple of hundred kelvins universally and dropped overall saturation by about 10%. On top of that I also pulled the orange down by anywhere from 5-20% more depending on how far away from natural daylight the picture was taken. Yellows were reduced by about 5% when lights were present in the pictures and highlights were reduced on a picture-by-picture basis.

Regardless of the difficulties with getting decent photos the Vasa Museum was still a great place to visit. If you like history or Disney movies about pirates then it’s a fabulous thing to see on a day in Stockholm. For more information about the museum as well as its opening times and ticket prices take a look at the official website: Vasa Museum.

Stockholm Cathedral

We started our guided, walking tour of Gamla Stan just outside Storkyrkan, the area’s oldest church, known as Stockholm Cathedral commonly but not officially. The interior of the church contains a famous statue of St George and the Dragon where the dragon is supposed to represent the Danish king, Christian I. We had to imagine it, though, as we didn’t have time to venture inside the historic building.

Stockholm Palace

Adjacent to the cathedral was the palace, Kungliga slottet, which we didn’t enter, although it is open to the public. We stepped into the parade square to the building’s west where we heard a little of some of the history and important events that had taken place in the palace with particular emphasis on the various architectural changes that had occurred over the centuries.

Stortorget

We then proceeded on a fairly circular walk through some of Gamla Stan’s roads and alleys to take us towards Stortorget.

Stortorget (or Big Square) is one of the most visited areas of Gamla Stan and the most recognisable from photographs of the place. It is the oldest public square in Stockholm and apparently has a very impressive Chistmas market but as we were visiting in the middle of June we couldn’t really have been any further from seeing that. A nicely-decorated well in the square provided one focal point of interest but the square’s most famous sights are the buildings that surround it; colourful and with a fair bit of history behind many of them.

Stortorget itself has a famous past, being the location of the Stockholm Bloodbath in 1520:

In November 1520 […] the Danish-Swedish king Christian II beheaded and hanged 90 people. This deed was accomplished notwithstanding the reprieve proclaimed by Queen Christina Gyllenstierna following four months of Danish siege. […] The executioners beheaded archbishops, councillors, noblemen, and city magistrates indiscriminately, including Erik Johansson Vasa, father of the succeeding king Gustav Vasa who escaped the fate of his father by hiding. All bodies were burned on Södermalm together with the body of the dead regent Sten Sture. The Danish king, satisfied with having pacified Sweden, returned to Denmark in December, drowning a few monks during the trip, while ignoring the dawning insurrection in Dalarna.

They did a good job with mopping up the blood and you wouldn’t have known it had been the scene of such terror if I hadn’t just mentioned it.

We finished off our visit to this old part of Sweden’s capital city by walking back to our coach outside the palace once more. As we boarded we saw a group of cadets (I’m guessing) lining up for some reason. I’d like to think they were seeing us off. Terribly polite people, the Swedes.

Gamla Stan was a very pleasant place but I think I would have enjoyed it more just knowing the history in advance then taking some time to explore on my own with a map. The guided walking tour was informative but restrictive and with some more time we’d have had a chance to explore the cathedral and palace as well as take in some shopping or dining options in the attractive area. Still, definitely worth a visit, and more official tourist information can be found here: Visit Stockholm: Gamla Stan.

Back on board the ship I took a few more photos from our aft cabin balcony – more-or-less the same sights but from a slightly lower angle – as we waited for departure and what would turn out to be a pleasant cruise through the Swedish Archipelago.

The speed of the cruise ship was necessarily low and with little wind to cope with this made for a wonderfully tranquil transit through the thousands of islands protecting Stockholm.

One interesting thing to keep an eye on from our aft cabin balcony viewpoint was the Tallink cruise ferry that was following us and would continue to do so through the night as our next stop would be the Estonian capital to which it was also heading.

At one point we slowly overtook a yacht enjoying the pleasant summer sunshine of the evening in the Swedish waters.

It had been almost uniformly dull weather-wise during our day exploring Stockholm but we’d had a wonderful time there and seen enough to know that it would be a place we’d love to return to at some point. Having really nice weather to finish off our flying visit to Sweden and help us appreciate the spectacle of the archipelago was the icing on the cake.

However, unlike when we’d visited Hamburg and taken the shuttle bus out of convenience but not because we’d planned to, with this cruise port stop at Gothenburg the shuttle bus for some free time exploration was a necessity as the actual port for ships was nearly nine kilometres away from the city centre as the crow flies, and considerably more by road.

The morning view from our balcony in the morning was a cool, overcast, but dry one.

Our shuttle bus for this visit to Gothenburg dropped us off at Gustav Adolfs Torg, a town square distinguished by a statue to Gustavus Adolphus, king of Sweden between 1611 and 1632. Gustavus became highly respected for his military leadership during the Thirty Years War, allying Sweden with the Protestants trying to defend themselves from Catholic forces looking to expand the Holy Roman Empire into the Baltic. His use of deploying well-trained mobile and infantry units to complement one another helped win decisive victories and the tactics were soon copied by other armies. Gustavus is credited with turning Sweden into a major European power during this period and for centuries after.

We’d come to Gothenburg on Island Princess with a couple of places we’d decided might be worth walking to, so headed off in the direction of the first, eastwards. This took us over the main canal of the city, then through Brunnsparken, a small spot where trams passed by frequently, a fountain flowed, and people sat at the bars and cafés dotted around.

A brief introduction to Gothenburg, this. In the next post in this 2022 Island Princess cruise travelogue series we’ll be looking around a nineteenth century park, the Garden Society of Gothenburg and the Palm House in it.

One small word of warning or advice, though: Gothenburg has two notable gardens pandering to the likes of those with botanical leanings and the Garden Society is the smaller of the two and the closer to the city centre (and therefore more easily-walkable-to which is why we headed there). The Gothenburg Botanical Garden is significantly larger but a little further south in Gothenburg. If you’re super-keen about flowers and plants then you’ll likely want to visit both.

Our walk through and look around the Garden Society of Gothenburg wasn’t born from a love of flora but rather it was something that was clearly other than just streets roughly on the way to another destination in the city we had in mind to visit. My personal knowledge of plant-life is small enough to write on the petal of a daisy and wouldn’t extend to much more than “I think this is the petal of a daisy” but parks and gardens are pleasing to wander around no matter what.

If you visit the Garden Society of Gothenburg you’ll find it impossible to miss the Palm House. Dating from 1878 and inspired by London’s Crystal Palace but to a slightly less grand scale, it still remains a gorgeous sight and is clearly a product of the industrial revolution, utilising large frames of iron and thousands of panes of glass.

The interior of the Palm House is split into five sections, each with different climates, but tropical heat and humidity is what greets you first. And in addition to greeting you it greets your camera which has been outside in the cool air of the Swedish city, and so your camera lens keeps misting up. Which means you keep having to wipe the lens and take a photo and hope that you’ve wiped without smearing too much and not given the lens surface enough time to fog over again.

Obviously, yes, you could simply be patient and wait until your equipment warms to the same as the ambient temperature in the greenhouse. But who has time for that? Anyway, that’s why some of the photos look a little smudgy. In fact I had better pictures from my phone in here (although I used it less often) simply because the phone was already effectively warmed up by being in my pocket.

There were some nice, exotic flowers on display but other than recognising pitcher plants, I couldn’t tell you what anything was.

In the largest section of the Palm House it was possible to climb steps to an upper platform where some tables and chairs were set out and locals were sitting around with food and drinks, chatting, and generally appreciating being inside.

Back outside, we continued our walk through the Garden Society of Gothenburg towards its south western exit because it was roughly to the south that we wanted to head next.

There’s not a lot to do in the Garden Society of Gothenburg other than enjoy the gardens and plants and flowers, but if enjoying gardens and plants and flowers is something you like then with its close proximity to the main part of Gothenburg it’s a free activity that’s clearly going to be worth your while.

In the next post in this 2022 Island Princess cruise travelogue series we’ll visit the Universeum in Gothenburg because we’d seen it combined science, zoo, and aquarium all in one place, and we like all those things.

After our walk through the The Garden Society Of Gothenburg And The Palm House we continued in a roughly southerly direction. Architecture in Gothenburg was fairly mixed so elements stood out as a result. Immediately outside the park we spotted a nineteenth century theatre, then one road over something that could have had a history as a church or fire station but was now a table tennis facility.

As we approached the Universeum there was a lot of building work taking place; excavations, demolitions, and construction were in evidence in every direction. With plenty of boards up to protect the roads and passers-by from any debris or to prevent trespassing there were also a lot of canvasses on which street artists could work. Actually getting any photos of any of it was incredibly difficult, though, as the pedestrianised areas to walk along were very narrow, squeezed between the busy main roads and hoardings. We thought we might be able to find more advantageous photography positions after our visit to the museum but that would not prove to be possible.

The Universeum itself was a very impressive building with a multistorey jungle setting inside one side accessed along bridges and up and down steps, but also capable of being visited by elevators on each level. Airlock-style entrances prevented any of the wildlife from escaping because some of the birds were free-flying. It was a great environment but warm, busy, and with lots of ups and downs requiring a fair bit of exertion – and we’re no spring chickens – that we soon realised that our tactic of entering at the lowest level was a mistake.

We abandoned our look low down and took the elevator to the top with the intention to explore from there downwards instead. Happily, we also saw that it was possible to head out onto a balcony area so it gave us a chance to get some fresh air and see Gothenburg from high altitude. The metallic-looking towers we immediately saw belonged to a hotel. The nearby dinosaur sculpture looked like it might have emerged from the excavation work taking place in all directions.

While one side of the Universeum held the tropical zoo-like environment, on the other side on each of the floors there were other rooms and that gave us the chance to look around the aquarium. Clean, large tanks, lots of varieties of fish and coral and sea urchins, and we’re rarely if ever disappointed with just stopping for a moment or two to watch fish swim effortlessly around.

Back to the other animals then before we decided to leave, and that took us past numerous reptiles, and, like the fish, they’re creatures that just make me relax. A lovely variety of snakes and lizards to admire curled up in various desert or jungle settings, and exotic flowers to ooh and aah over as well.

We spent less time in the Universeum than we’d expected, despite its large size and arguably good attractions that should have suited us perfectly. In truth, this was more a place for families with kids, so if you’re visiting Gothenburg with children then there’s a lot to recommend here, especially given the large amusements area next to the Universeum that we weren’t interested in checking out.

We mostly enjoyed the building and things in the Universeum although we encountered some behaviour from locals – visitors and staff – that we wouldn’t quite describe as rude, but would definitely put down as just over the border there in Unfriendlyland. It affected the experience. You know the stereotype about Londoners on tube trains being sullen and unapproachable? This was like that, but colder. We’d interacted with a couple of people while walking around the Palm House before this, too, with similar results; holding a door open for someone and smiling but being met with an icy stare and not even a nod of acknowledgement; that sort of thing. Something about the people of Gothenburg did not endear us to their city.

And that’s part of the reason that we decided that we’d cut short our walk around the city at this point. There was another area we’d considered taking a look at on this day in Gothenburg: Haga, the old town. This would have meant the almost-circular route we’d planned before returning to the shuttle bus pick-up point, but the general downbeat feeling at this point coupled with light rain that had started helped us to decide to head back early instead. In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll do just that when we say goodbye to Gothenburg.

“You can’t really appreciate a country and its people and its culture until you’ve been begging for money to get the bus out of the isolated village where everyone pees in the street and the dogs won’t leave you alone,” is the sort of thing I imagine they might say. Or: “Two weeks on a cruise ship can’t possibly compare with really getting to know everything there is to know about this tree and the bush nearby I’ve been sleeping rough in.”

We like to see things differently. Cruising for us allows us to quickly get a feel for historical aspects and architectural aspects, and enjoy local food and drink, all admittedly within a reasonable distance of the coast of a country. That short visit that coincides with a hefty injection of money into the local economy (sly dig!) gives us a chance to decide if we do want to see more of the place. Call me cynical, but I suspect the only reason a lot of “real” travellers return to a place time after time isn’t to learn more about it and see new things but because it’s cheap and they’re seeking revenge on the guy who stole their wallet last time.

Hey, we’ve all got our prejudices against anyone who doesn’t travel in exactly the same way as us. It’s fun to denigrate an entire class of people.

“Mark, really appreciating you telling me this, really helping me get to know you more, but what does it actually have to do with Gothenburg?”

Good point, narrative device. I’ll get to that now.

A single day, I must admit, may not be quite enough time to know everything about a place but it’s enough time to form an opinion, and sometimes you just get a strong feeling for somewhere. And we didn’t enjoy this day in Gothenburg very much.

We concluded our time in Gothenburg by making our way as quickly as possible from the Universeum to where the shuttle bus could take us back to Island Princess docked a decidedly inconvenient nine kilometres away from the city.

We may not have visited Gothenburg on its best of days. We may have picked the wrong direction and wrong things to see. The weather wasn’t particularly pleasant so that didn’t help. But the people were the thing that put us off Gothenburg the most. Aren’t the people the “real” part of a country? We didn’t meet a single happy or polite person at all. I fully accept that the common element in all this was us, but we actually get on pretty well with most people even if we’re not the most forthcoming, and I only generate an air of menace when someone upsets me.

When we travel somewhere we almost always think “Yeah, lots more to see, we could definitely come back here and explore more, maybe stay and experience more.” But after just a few hours ashore, Gothenburg left us with more of a “Well, we’ve been here now, I suppose.” Perhaps it takes the “real” travellers two weeks to get that feeling about pee-ridden villages and the mystery of their missing passport, so whose form of travelling is truly the best?

Ours, obviously. Duh. We get cocktails at the end of every night.

We headed back towards the city centre, accompanied by light drizzle in the air and grey clouds in our heads. You want to know how unimpressed we were with it all? We didn’t even try to find a bar to see if it could persuade us the city had had any saving grace.

Gothenburg still has some nice if not exactly exceptional architecture, and with a few canals here and there it certainly felt like it could look considerably more appealing on a sunny day.

The statue of King Karl IX we passed by has an interesting history attached to it. The king himself only ruled for seven years and they were spent almost entirely at war partly due to siding with the Protestants during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation conflicts, but he was seen as forming an historical bridge between his own father and that of his more respected son, Gustavus Adolphus, whose statue we’d seen when we’d been dropped off at the town square in Gothenburg. The original statue was supposed to be of the king on foot but the instigator of the plan to erect a statue raised enough funding to put up the equestrian statue of Karl IX instead.

The statue was erected in 1904 but in 1935 it became necessary to move it out of the way of increasing traffic. This wasn’t without protest by the people and some council members but the move eventually took place, shifting the statue ten metres and turning it to face west.

The king’s sword was stolen in 1977 and a new one was commissioned to replace it. In 1998 the original sword was found in someone’s house and can now be seen on display in the Museum of Gothenburg.

Continuing with our theme of grumpy Swedes, as we approached a fountain we’d passed earlier in the day we saw some people demonstrating for or against something. They were being filmed. They had a loudspeaker. Some were holding up photos of women in lingerie. Absolutely no idea what was going on, but I do know that as soon as they saw me with my camera we had their attention and whatever it was that they were declaring loudly (and in an unfriendly tone, naturally, since, you know, when in Gothenburg and all that) was directed at me now. Accusations or general statements or questions, we didn’t know. We were able to play the roles of Tourists Who Don’t Know What The Hell You’re Saying So We’re Going To Ignore You And Hope This Doesn’t Escalate so well it’s a wonder we didn’t get nominated at the Oscars.

The centre of the granite fountain near where the loud locals were congregated hosted a bronze statue of a woman, the first statue of a woman to be erected in Gothenburg. Dating from 1883 and officially known as The Sowing Woman, it’s more colloquially known as Johanna in Brunnsparken for one of two competing theories: either that was the name of the ballet dancer model who posed for the sculpture, or the statue’s opening day coincided with Johanna’s name day in Sweden.

That concluded our somewhat disappointing time in the city of Gothenburg as we made it to the square at the perfect time to board a shuttle bus and take us back to Island Princess docked at the not-so-nearby port.

Back on the ship we grabbed a snack and a drink, headed to our room, and did all the usual things such as showering, charging batteries, and backing up photos ahead of the sail away from Sweden.

Gothenburg’s port has a number of little islands dotted around and, probably like the city itself, could look very nice on a day with better weather. It was a little flat and grey for our cruise away but I still enjoyed the views of low-lying rocky land with small lighthouses, though, and as you can see, I took plenty of photographs of the departure on the ship.

Of course we’d like to go back to Gothenburg at some point, despite everything I’ve said, and give it a second chance. We are people who are prepared to change our minds in the face of new evidence or the introduction of some happy drug in the city’s water supply just before we arrive. But for this cruise, that was Sweden completed.

The evening aboard Island Princess was more of an “Ah, that’s better” time. That’s the joy of cruising, after all; no matter what happens ashore you can always get back and have a nice meal with drinks before, during, and afterwards. And that’s exactly what we did.

In the next post in this cruise travelogue series we’ll be visiting Copenhagen for the second time in a year and our third visit overall. Spoiler: we like Copenhagen a lot. Not so much of a spoiler: we like Copenhagen more than Gothenburg.