When Meredith and I tour a country, we like to see as much of the country as we can efficiently manage while still actually seeing sights – no pulling up and taking a photo and driving on to the next place. But when you have large countries, say, like Sweden, you sometimes have days made up largely of travel. Especially when you pin yourself out on an island two-and-a-half hours from Stockholm, where the rental car is. Today was a fairly long in-motion day, but we managed to interspace some touring into the boat, bus, foot, and car travel.
We got up early at Sandhamn to catch the first ferry out, which left at 8:40. The only ferry that goes all the way to Stockholm leaves at 3:00 p.m., so we couldn’t wait for that. We took the fifty-minute ferry to an island that had bridge connections all the way back to Stockholm so that we could take a bus back, getting to the city about 11:00. It was raining in the archipelago, but only lightly. Mer found that the back of the boat had a very small outside deck that was covered by an open upper deck, and that there were two dry chairs back there. So we sat out on the deck and watched the islands and the sea roll by. Even with the rain, the water was calm, and the trip was still beautiful. That counted as some tourism on a travel day.
We caught the bus and rode fifty minutes into the city. The bus was really hot, and I had awakened with a stiff neck that sometimes can trigger stomachaches and migraines. I treated the neck, but was left feeling fragile, healthwise. Between the bus’s heat and its swaying, my stomach got really upset. Mer saw that and suggested we ride an extra stop to get close to Gamla Stan, where we could walk outside rather than take another bus to the train station to the car rental building. I quickly agreed.
So, even though we were schlepping luggage with us, we walked back into the old town of Stockholm. That was some touring in itself, but we got a light lunch outside of a bakery on the main square, where we sat across from the Swedish Academy, which awards the Nobel Prizes. That was fun. As we left the bakery, we heard music and investigated, and saw some helmet plumes over the heads of a huge crowd; it was the ceremonial changing of the guard at the in-town palace. We didn’t stick around, since we couldn’t see very well, but that was cool to almost see.
The walk to the car rental place wasn’t too exciting, but we did manage to see a small square near the main square that we hadn’t seen before. We had left the rain back on the outer islands, and the day was a pretty one for walking. The food and walk cleared up my head and stomach nicely.
It took about thirty or forty minutes to get our car (there was a line of people being helped by only one worker for a long time), but we got the car and got underway. It wasn’t a terribly scenic drive, but it went smoothly, and we finally pulled up to our hotel in Kalmar, about five hours south of Stockholm, at 6:30.
You would assume that at 6:30, after about eleven hours of our being in motion, we would get some food and go to bed. But, as readers know by now, I travel with Meredith, and it doesn’t get dark here until about 10:15 p.m. We did get some fantastic food, at a restaurant in the city center called Symposium, but then we toured another two-and-a-half hours. Make hay while the sun shines.
It was a perfect evening – cool and with a few puffy clouds. Kalmar is right on the Baltic Sea, and so there are water views from all along the park on the eastern side of town. The town also has a castle, with a dry moat and a water-filled moat, so this is a fun place to wander. Which we did. We saw a small glassed-in gazebo operating as a small art museum showing the works of an artist who worked on the nearby large island, Oland. We popped over to the castle and looked in, but decided not to crash the very swanky-looking wedding reception going on. We did walk up on the outer walls and look out over the sea, which was quite pretty.
From there, we trekked out to the pier, where we were surprised to find several teen boys swimming in the sea on this sixty-degree day. Carpe swimming – swim while you can, I guess. We then wrapped up the touring of the day with a long stroll through a park out to the island park of Stenso. Between the sea on one side and the park on the other with the cool evening, it was a pretty wonderful stroll. On the way back to the hotel, we went through the town instead of going along the shore, and we admired the red and yellow homes, the well-kept yards, and the flowering trees and shrubs.
On a day of about seven-and-a-half hours of travel, we managed to do some five hours of touring, That’s not something I’d want to do every day of any trip, but it does get us to see more of the country. Welcome to the far south of Sweden!