Stockholm, Sweden
While still at the dock in Gamla Stan or the Old City in Stockholm, Sweden, we had our breakfast, after which many of us took a small ferry to Skansen, an open air museum (probably the first one in the world, and opened in 1891) to enjoy a series of old houses built in different parts of Sweden, collected for the enjoyment of visitors, from the Sami Camp in the extreme north to the Skåne Farmstead in the south. These are traditional houses and barns set among gardens and the countryside (75 acres) brought here so they would not be lost.
There are also a great number of domestic animals as well as wild ones, including the wily wolverine, animals very hard to see due to their secretive habits. By midday we were back on the small ferry and en route to our ship, some of us walking back to our ship and enjoying more of the city and its beautiful buildings.
Lunch was taken by most of us aboard National Geographic Explorer, and shortly after we boarded buses and were taken to the Historical Museum, where we saw an incredible wealth of material relating to the human history of Sweden.
By mid-afternoon we were all aboard and had set sail (!!) for the open Baltic, en route to our next day’s destination: Gotland, one of the large islands in the Baltic, near the coast of Sweden. Our route took us along a series of lovely islands, mostly inhabited, and with a good number of trees and other green vegetation, consisting principally of Scots Pine, linden, horse chestnuts and beech trees.
