We didn’t manage to get planes in today, but we did do boats, buses, and trains/subways. And we threw in fifteen miles of walking and a reunion as well. Good, if busy, day.

After breakfast, we headed out around 9:00, heading toward (wait for it…) the water, but this time the water near the town hall, which is further west than we’ve done yet. We were there to get the very scenic boat for the fifty-minute ride to Drottningholm Palace, home to the royal family (their part of the palace isn’t open to the public, oddly). The boat took us east along a sort-of-river, sort-of-lake (I’m not sure where the boundary between narrow lake and lazy river comes into play), and it was a very beautiful day. Mer and I were in the front of the boat (known as the “bow”) and we were happy to be out of the sun (known as “in the shade”). The surroundings looked a lot like coastal Maine, with heavily forested areas and lots of small islands, except that the islands had more exposed rock than Maine islands typically have.

The palace hove into view, which was the first inkling I had that we were going to a palatial home. Mer had planned today, so I was just going along for the very pleasant ride. The palace is right on the water and makes a fine “whoa” sight across the lake as you round the last island in the way. The house is painted a cheerful yellow, is large but not overwhelming, and is classically symmetrical and set in lush (but oddly flowerless) grounds. I was very fond of the place immediately.

We got ashore as efficiently as possible so that Mer could check to see if we could get on an English-language tour of the house. We could, and we got tickets for 11:30. We then found the theater building on the grounds to see if we could get tickets for an English-language tour later. We could, but didn’t need to reserve, so we could come back later.

So we went back to the palace to join our tour. We were two of about twenty or so, and the guide spoke good English and at a volume loud enough to fill whatever room we were in. She took us through some highlights of the public part of the palace. It was developed into a fine building by Queen Hedvig, who was a widow queen holding the throne for her son until he came of age. She rebuilt the palace into the current form after the previous one burned down. It was originally used as a summer and fall retreat for the royal family, but the current king and queen have lived there since the early eighties.

The interior of the palace is grand, with paintings and carvings and statues all resplendently on display. I didn’t find even the most decorated rooms (and there were some) to be over the top or tacky. The queen’s bedroom was probably the most elaborate decorated, but it was done in simple colors that made all the plaster work be more harmonious.

We toured the main level and then went up a very grand staircase with a dozen full-sized statues looking down on us, and through multiple rooms on the second floor, finishing up in a large room used for festivals and state functions. The walls were all lined with full-sized portraits of the king and queen heads of state of nineteenth-century Europe. Since Sweden was neutral, the king could display many heads of state in his room since Sweden wasn’t at war with any of them.

After the house tour, we walked over to the separate building of the palace theater, built around 1766 by a queen who had been brought up in Berlin and thought that Sweden needed more modern culture. The theater is very large, with a stage about sixty feet deep. The queen’s son, Gustav III, carried on her love of theater, and even had Swedish-language plays performed for the first time. He also gave free tickets to common people to come see the plays, but they sat in the back behind a curtain that went up just as the performance started so as not to see the nobles at the front of the theater.

Gustav III was assassinated in 1792, and the theater was used for storage until the early 1920s when a scholar found the theater to be still intact and worked to get the stage open again. Since the place had been untouched for over 125 years, all of the stage machinery from the late 1700s was still intact. The ropes had to be replaced, but everything still worked, which makes the theater the only one in Europe to put on performances that still use the original Baroque stage methods. It’s impressive – the stagehands can change all the backdrop scenery in just six seconds using muscle power.

That wrapped up the theater tour, so we set off to walk though the large formal gardens, strolling our way to the Chinese pavilion, where there’s a cafe where we got lunch. We got to tour the pavilion on our own. It’s the largest Chinese pavilion of its kind in Europe – most royals who caught the Eastern bug only had a room or two decked out in (perceived) Chinese fashion. The pavilion had more than fifteen rooms (depending on how you count large connecting hallways), and also had a couple of outbuildings used by the royal family as well. According to what we read, the pavilion was where the family went to get away from the pressure of the court, to where they could garden or read or talk.

After that, we walked back along the canal features of the grounds, accidently getting stuck on an island and having to go back the way we came. The grounds around the canals were in a more wild English garden style, which was mostly trees growing in less manicured positions and open grassy fields.

By then, it was after 4:15, so we quickly tried to find a museum of sculpture from the grounds, but it was closed. So we started the bus-to-train-to-subway journey back into downtown Stockholm, where we met up with our friend and former student Kim. Kim just got to Stockholm today. She works in the audiobook division of Spotify, which is a Swedish company, and they flew a bunch of people in to celebrate the company’s birthday. Since she was here and we were here, we met up at her hotel down by the water, and we walked to the main central island of Gamla Stan to go get dinner. Mer and I hadn’t been on Gamla Stan yet, and we crossed the bridge to the island right in front of the king’s in-town palace, so we got to see two palaces on the same day (I liked Drottningholm better – from the outside, at any rate).

Supper was a fun time of catching up with Kim, and then we walked about three quarters of a mile to find a store where Kim could buy plug adapters for her electronics; she had brought ones that work in the UK, which don’t work in Sweden. We got to the store just a few minutes before closing, and celebrated that small victory by going to get dessert from a stand on the pedestrian street Mer and I had walked down the other day.

We walked Kim back to her hotel, where we visited for another fifteen minutes or so, while relaxing in the lobby, where we could look out to the harbor. We then said goodbye, and Mer and I walked back home, finishing up the day with fifteen miles of walking.

It’s no Drottningholm palace, but I was still plenty happy to see my temporary home. Even good days can be tiring days.