Today started off with Colin eating bacon, wild boar sausage and scrambled egg followed by dried reindeer meat, water melon and strawberries and ended with him eating veal steaks followed by pavlova and M&M's! Quite an eclectic menu with roast turkey and cheese on toasted bread for lunch! His capacity for food amazes me!
We had a brilliant day sightseeing in Stockholm again. We visited the Vassamuseem which houses a 14th century wooden war ship (my blog picture) which sank 1.5 kms from it's launch site and took 333 years to raise from the sea bed; a similar story to the Mary Rose. This ship was definitely a King's folly, as he wanted it to be more decorative and imposing than those before it, disregarding the knowledge of ship wrights~Colin says serves them right !
It was however a fantastic museum!
As we conclude our 1st stage of the journey it seems only right to sum up feelings and thoughts of our journey.
We have found very little differences between Holland, Germany, Denmark and Sweden; apart from dialect and language. The landscapes have been predominately arable with smatterings of dairy production. We have seen more windmills in Denmark and Sweden than in Holland! That brings me to the topic of wind turbines. Now it's probably not a topic you would think of ripe for discussion but having travelled over 1000 miles it's something that I now know a little about!
In Britain we have a smattering of wind farms but here in the Netherlands, and Scandanavia wind farms are big business. When we were in Malmo we saw a factory which had changed from manufacturing steel for boat building to making the columns for wind turbines. Along our journey we have seen turbines that are plain ugly, those which are decorated with red or orange tips. Some are unitarian and some which are aesthetically beautiful. My favourite turbines are those made by Energie in Malmo which are coloured in various shades of green moving up their elegantly tapered columns and have beautifully shaped blades. The rota houses vary from rectangular to curvaceous forms- sad, but there you go, there is little else for a pillion to do but sightsee and wonder.
We have been amazed by the language skills of every-one we have met. All have a high level of English and most also have an equally high level of German. Can you image a hairdresser in Liverpool or London being able to converse fluently in Swedish or German? Some may query whether they actually speak English!
I wonder how many hot dog and burger stand people in and around the Olympic arena have the capacity to converse with their customers in their native language?
We boarded our ferry to Tallinn without any hassle and thankfully found the piano bar serving Happy hour drinks of G&T's for £3.50-much more in Colin's pocket!
We didn't realise that the ferry's timings are an hour ahead of Sweden so we were late for our evening meal but the staff are quite used to the problem! If you've ever travelled on a channel or North Sea ferry you will know about the safety messages and continual announcements bring made, on this ferry we have had none- obviously the ferry operators have decided that the rule of survival of the fittest and those literate enough to have read the safety notices will prevail in case of an emergency! We observed an irate Japanese man hammering on the window of the closed duty free shop shouting at the cashier wanting to know what time they opened; she very slowly pointed to the signs on the window with a clock on showing exactly the opening and closing times- I don't hold out much hope for him if the emergency siren goes!
I have never seen such a scrum and stampede as in the duty free shop (once open!) but after seeing the prices it became clear why this was the case. With prices of 4 euros for a bottle of wine instead of 40 and packs of beer for the same price as 1 in Sweden; it would be like the pound shops at home suddenly selling wine, beer and spirits. We just hope that most of them have bought to take home or there is going to be some seriously ill people on board!

Sailing out through the archipelago of islands that make up Stockholm and this part of Sweden was absolutley stunning. Especially as the sun began to set and the shimmering water reflected the colours of the sky; truly wonderful. We passed tiny islands with just one house on them to slightly larger ones with a small community clustered around the jetty; we were wondering if these were summer residences or all year round houses when our waiter arrived and told us that these were summer homes of the most wealthy people in Sweden- that explains why they were so big and impressive.