Stockholm from the Waterfront

Asking ourselves, ‘Where am I right now?’ gives us a chance to step outside the internal dialogue for a moment of peace. Look around you, take a deep breath and notice what you see, hear and feel. Present moment awareness is the point of power and choice. It frees us from our compulsive thoughts.
Laura Harvey

If you find yourself in the capital of Sweden on a hot summer day, I suggest you head out to the archipelago. Since Stockholm is built on water the archipelago is close and you can go with any of the ferries in the city. My goal for the past three years has been to head out there at least once each summer, more if possible. This year we hit a perfect day for it. Puffy clouds and sunshine, wind in my hair and time to document it with my camera…

After a quick walk through the city, you can enter a ferry boat and settle in with that feeling of boundless freedom that traveling always brings (even a short travel for about 2 hours gives me that feeling of letting go of all my troubles/compulsive thoughts) …

Then as quick as that, you’ve left streets, cars and must-do-lists behind and you’re free.

The air is all of a sudden different, and everything is so blue, blue, blue.

Just as you leave you can see the museums that dots the outskirts of Stockholm. Behind these two boats…

…you get a glimpse of the Vasa museum. It’s been a long time since I visited it, but it’s a cool place. A house built around an ancient ship, as the sad story goes:

Vasa is a Swedish warship built between 1626 and 1628. The ship foundered and sank after sailing about 1,300 m (1,400 yd) into her maiden voyage on 10 August 1628. She fell into obscurity after most of her valuable bronze cannons were salvaged in the 17th century until she was located again in the late 1950s in a busy shipping lane just outside the Stockholm harbor.

Salvaged with a largely intact hull in 1961, she was housed in a temporary museum called Wasavarvet (“The Wasa Shipyard”) until 1988 and then moved to the Vasa Museum in Stockholm.

The ship is one of Sweden’s most popular tourist attractions and has been seen by over 29 million visitors since 1961. Since her recovery, Vasa has become a widely recognized symbol of the Swedish “great power period” and is today a de facto standard in the media and among Swedes for evaluating the historical importance of shipwrecks.

Fun facts from wikipedia. Next we pass the old amusement park, located on the seaward side of the Djurgården island:

It is called Gröna Lund and was founded in 1883 by James Schultheiss. It was huge to me when I was a kid, but in reality it is relatively small compared to other amusement parks (the 15-acre amusement park has around 30 attractions), mainly due to its central location, which limits expansion. It sits right by the water, and the best way to get there is by ferry. Anyway, let’s continue outward…

I spotted a cool water sculpture, but then decided to put my camera away and just enjoy the ride for a bit.

Just a few minutes away from the city of Stockholm, the archipelago begins…

With nearly 30,000 islands, islets and rocks there is plenty of stuff to explore for a whole life time.

If you enjoyed the tour, come along tomorrow and will board the island and take a look – and maybe take time to journal a bit too?