Taking July Off

How Much Is Your Dollar Worth?
$1 = 5.9673 SEK



We finally had our first visitors from the New World when Ry and Kim came to see us on their European Adventure. We showed them everything that Sweden had to offer, that we could fit into four and a half days. We took them down to Skokloster, a 17th century Baroque castle on lake Mälaren (between Uppsala and Stockholm). It was pretty cool. You can take a boat there from Uppsala. There are some pictures here in the slide show. When the guy who had it built died it was turned into a living museum by his family so it's full of some really cool old pieces that are a couple hundred years old. Here's a link to the Encyclopedia Britannica of our day... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skokloster

We also tried some restaurants that we haven't been too before. Some pretty good places. O'Conner's, the Irish Pub where we spent St. Patrick's day, was really good and I think that is a place where we can hang out quite a bit. The owner is pretty cool and said that he would look into stocking some root beer at the bar as well. Sounds silly to ask about root beer but they don't have it here and it is one of those weird things that you miss when it's not available. I guess it would be one of those "taken for granted" things that people talk about so much.

We also took them down to Stockholm to show them the "old town," Gamla Stan. Lots of cool things to see there and take pictures of, including the royal palace. We also got on some "Hop-on, Hop-off" boat tours to go around the Stockholm waterways and over to the Vasa museum. The Vasa museum contains the Vasa warship, built in the 1600's and sank around 10 minutes into it's maiden voyage. It sat in Stockholm harbor for 333 years before it was salvaged and restored and made into a museum. It's probably the finest museum ever built on the topic of sunken Swedish warships. I would strongly recommend it to any one visiting Stockholm. And as always, for more information on this topic, consult your local library... or this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasa_museum

Anyway it was a great visit and we can't wait for our next visitors to come out.