Tuesday, July 14, 2015

A Day At The Museums

Riddarholm Church




My dad and I spent the morning wandering around Riddarholm Church which was built in the 13th century. This picture does not do justice to the building, so I suggest you google it and look at all the people who are clearly better photographers than I am with my iPhone 4S (yes I realize it's time for an upgrade!)








Royal Robe which I probably wasn't supposed to photograph









Then we walked through the streets of Gamla Stan so we could be at the royal palace before it opened. We toured through the treasury, located in the vault of the castle, which houses many of the royal crowns, swords and this beautiful robe worn by one of the queens on her coronation.







Tre Kronor Museum
We also walked through the Tre Kronor Museum which is located in the belly of the castle and tells the history of both castles that have sat on that site.


The Queen's throne
Then we headed upstairs to see the royal chapel before our guided tour of the royal apartments. Our guide led us through many of the ornate rooms of the castle and educated us on the history of the Swedish monarchy. The guided tour is about 45 minutes long and is included in the price of admission to the castle. I highly recommend it! One of the great things about the ticket to the castle is it grants you access to the Treasury, the Tre Kronor Museum, the Royal Apartments and Gustav III's Museum. There are free guided tours offered at designated times at each of the exhibits, and your ticket is good for 7 days, so you don't have to see it all at once. 




After we walked through the castle we headed across the street to the Royal Coin Cabinet, a museum that houses coins from all over the world. The funniest thing about this museum is that entrance is free, but you have to pay to use the washroom. The only thing unfortunate about the exhibits was that about 80% of the information was written only in Swedish. English explanations were few and far between. If you're a coin collector, or interested in the history of money in Europe than check it out.





Viking Helmet
Our next stop was the Swedish History Museum. It houses a Viking exhibit, some great hands-on exhibits for kids, a few long and vague films regarding Swedish history, as well as an exhibit about Christianity's influence on Sweden through the years. There's something fro the whole family here, from your kids, to that artsy aunt of yours who would probably scoff at my amateur iPhone photography.

After all that we had a very late lunch in the train station and went back to the hotel room to rest our feet. We came back out for a walk and found that it had rained while we were in our room. We walked through the freshly washed streets and found ourselves at the very Scandinavian Kebab House for dinner.  

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