The Train!?

10/31/2012
Today I spent my second day in Stockholm before returning to Sala by train. Stockholm was so beautiful, and we spent today walking around the older parts with cobble stone streets. We even walked along a road that was only 90cm across! We spent the majority of our morning walking through the old part of Stockholm and visiting some of the small shops. One of the stores we went into had the largest collection of painted wooden horses. Tomorrow Emma and I are planning on visiting one of the largest of these painted wooden horses. They are incredibly beautiful!

We also saw the changing of the guard at the royal palace. The royal family no longer lives here but the royal guard is still posted outside and change shifts every day around noon. Today we got lucky. It was one of the few times each week when the royal guard is accompanied by the royal band who marched in along with the guard and after the changing of the guard they played a small concert. They we incredibly good and even had people playing the french horn and the bassoon, which are incredibly hard instruments to march with and still make them sound good!

After we watched the changing of the guard we visited a small museum that contained several royal artifacts from the palace throughout the ages, including many of the articles of clothing that the previous and current royal family had worn before. However we did not say long. Our stomachs, growling with hunger, soon led us to a small restaurant close by with delicious food. After lunch Ida headed off to pick up her younger brother and sister from the bus station, they would be traveling back to Sala with us that night, while Emma, Austin, and I visited the royal palace gift shop and the royal apartments within the palace. The apartments were huge, lavish rooms with extremely cool fern vases in each that looked like tall pillars made out of porcelain or clay covered in elaborate designs.

After visiting the royal apartments within the palace we went in search of the medieval museum where we were to meet Ida and her younger siblings, however we got desperately lost on the way and were only able to find the museum after we found Ida and asked a shop keeper for help. The medieval museum was extremely fun, mainly because it was a children's museum and contained life size replaces of the buildings that you might find in the real medieval Stockholm that you could climb around in. We were having so much fun in the museum that we lost track of time and had to rush to the train station in time to make our train, or try to at least. Austin, Ida, and her siblings already had their tickets and were able to make the train in time, however Emma and I, who did not have tickets yet, missed the train while trying to purchase tickets. However, there were several later trains that we could take and we made it home safe and sound with just a bit of excitement and adventure. Tack, tills imorgon!