No rain this morning – yay!

A local tour guide gave us a very informative and entertaining tour through the old city. We learned a lot! The Rick Steves tours are known for the local, personal touches and we experience that today. The guide took to his apartment and shared a little bit of his personal life.

During the lunch break, we did a quick tour of the Royal Armory museum (which is free) and it was very interesting. The exhibits are really well done. It helped that we had some basic knowledge of Swedish history by this point.

The group took a ferry to the Vasa Museum after lunch. I won’t go into the whole explanation of what the Vasa is. Suffice it to say that it’s a huge 17th century war ship that was rescued from bottom of the harbor and restored in the 20th century. It’s impressive!

We opted to take a tram back to the area of our hotel to visit an indoor market (not that interesting) and make a quick rest stop. Next was a must see – the National Swedish Library. There was a nice small exhibit about the history and mission of the library. I like concise exhibits! We could see the Special Collections room because it was closed and we didn’t have the necessary credentials anyway.

Dick was a little obsessed about getting a SIM card for his phone and we spent a half hour being bounced from one store to another before he finally gave up. It seems like temporary SIM cards aren’t a thing here.

We went back to the old city for dinner at a little highly recommended restaurant and we were lucky to get a table outside without a reservation. Nice!

Curious siting: a parliamentary election is coming up soon in Sweden and there are political posters everywhere. This one is for the current Prime Minister. We walked by her residence and right in front is a line of posters for her opponent – kinda in your face!