Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, encompasses 14 islands of the vast Stockholm archipelago on the Baltic. Ferries and sightseeing boats shuttle passengers between islands, beneath more than 50 bridges. .

We have no plans for Stockholm today. Our time is limited to roughly six hours to explore this beautiful city. I had a list of places I would like to visit but time doesn't permit us to see all of them. We opt for another HOHO bus and boat combo for €80pp. The buses are sitting right here at the pier which makes it easy. We ride around for over an hour while listening to the interesting commentary. We also use the bus as a means to access Gamla Stan. The cobblestone streets and ochre-colored buildings of medieval Gamla Stan, the old town, are home to a 13th-century cathedral, the royal palace of Kungliga Slottet and its underground armory along with cafes and restaurants. Even more important are the all the shops lining the streets as Karen finds them quite interesting. She also discovers that, despite the lack of a single Swedish Krona, they still kindly accept our MasterCard. How convenient.

We spend a couple hours in this area, exploring the streets and finally coming to rest at an outdoor cafe where we share a sandwich, accompanied by an ice tea and a Swedish lager. The tea was a peach tea and Karen loved it. We exited old town at the water's edge where, after about a 10 minute wait time, we boarded the HOHO boat and rode around for 45 more minutes, using it as our return transportation and finally docking right back at the same pier as our ship. Final boarding is 4:30pm and it just before 4 now so we did pretty good. It was a day of sun mixed with rain but still enjoyable. We really liked this place and could easily spend several days here. As always with cruises, one gets only a taste of each destination and, whether or not you find it fascinating or utterly deplorable, it's just a sample, leaving it up to each person to return again if they so wish. I check out the free WiFi offered at the pier but it never loads so we board the Zuiderdam.

Mom wants to go the the dining room for dinner and I want to watch the sail away from our deck as we again pass through the archipelago of Stockholm, containing 30,000 islands of all sizes. Some appear uninhabited while others have beautiful homes with docks on them, mostly summer homes for the more affluent. I persuade her to hold off awhile and we leave for the dinner a bit after 6pm. We are seated with two other couples. We talk about traveling and Mom get into her Romanian train stories, stolen passports and Thailand travel which entertains everyone so well that we fail to make it to the 8pm show and they just sit, mesmerized by Karen's tales of adventure, until well past 9pm

We bid farewell to our new friends, returning to our stateroom where I load some pictures onto the blog before falling asleep while Mom watches a movie until 11:30. Finally, that's it!


Note: Date - 6/21/16 - This is the last post I have that's prepared with pictures. My blogs up through 6/26 are written but no pictures have been downloaded from our cameras since this post. We have had little time to assemble the whole thing and I've been lucky just to keep writing before I forget what we've been doing. That will happen after only a few days. I will try to get caught up when I can. We are outside Oslo tonight and return our car to Copenhagen tomorrow.

Weather: Occasional showers, 61°F