The Archive

Stockholm sydrome

Right, let's awaken to a beautiful Stockholm, er, early afternoon to enjoy the remaining 15 minutes of daylight with a bit of proper touristing.

It was a lovely day (lie – it was raining, but the sun came out in a false dawn every 5 minutes or so) and we decided to start with the old town and royal palace.

So off we wandered, past an alarming number of high-end furniture design shops, to the old town.

Stockholm is actually constructed on a load of islands (14, at last count) and Gamla Stan, the old town, is just one of these.

The first sight on crossing the bridge from the North, is the Royal Palace.

It's rubbish.

You know how disappointing Buckhingham Palace is? Well the Swedes were obviously thinking along the same lines with their version.

"We need a palace."

"Excellent, we'll need turrets, a moat, crenellations and possibly a high tower in which to imprison assorted princesses."

"Hmm, not in the budget I'm afraid."

"Ok, ramparts, a modest portcullis and a huge dining table?"

"Not so much."

"Fine. A very large, bland Georgian house then?"

"You've got the job."

Possibly the best thing about the Palace (and many of the other Royal sights we saw) was that they were guarded by tasty Swedish women soldiers with guns (goodness, there's a whole porn site in just that one sentence isn't there?).

Anyway, further walking took us into the old town, which turned out to be fairly nice, but notable mostly for the amazing diversity, quality and pointlessness of the tat for sale in various shops.

Not to mention the splendid variety of viking and moose memorabilia on offer...



After that, we stopped off for a quiet beer when Wig suddenly announces "It's my birthday."

I mean sure, we forgot his birthday, but come on, he forgot his own birthday himself, so you can't blame us really.

So, after a quick rendition of happy birthday, we returned to the hotel for a little dark time to prepare for the evening.

posted by Peter The Great @ 8:03 PM