Stockholm

22 July- hot and sunny. Tried the metro today- very easy to navigate. Caught train to their old city called Gamla Stan. This was the original part of Stockholm and like most old cities is very scenic. Lots of cobblestones, ancient homes etc. Visited the Royal Palace where their royal family still resides. Didn't do a tour but you could still see some parts like the Royal Chapel and we fluked the changing of the guards ceremony. That was actually really enjoyable. The guards wore bright blue uniforms with quite scary looking metallic helmets complete with the pointy Teutonic looking thing on the helmet. It was actually quite warlike. We gathered that these guards have been in existence since the 1500's. We walked across one of the many bridges here to then get to the City Hall. We had to do a tour to visit this building so decided that was a good idea. The Nobel prizes ( other than the peace prize) are all awarded in the large hall here. The outside is very dark forbidding looking- bit like Oslo's city hall but the inside is pretty impressive. Everything is huge- the statues, doorways etc are all massive. It was definitely designed to impress. We wandered back to the Gamla Stan and enjoyed the streets a bit more than caught train back to Hornstull which is our local station. Read somewhere that we were correct- this is an up and coming area and is full of hipsters apparently. We bought some food to cook for tonight to have a break from restaurant food. Stockholm is very scenic- more scenic than Oslo.