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Today we were real tourists and went to a museum - the Vasa Museet on Djurgärden island! We had to take a bus a train and a team to get there- which was lots of fun navigating, but Chris and I make a good team between knowing how to intermingle the transport options in the best way to get to where we wanted, reading a very small map and getting us going in the right direction. As a result of using the underground, when you come back up above ground your sense of direction is rather confused!
Lets get back to the Vasa Museum though - it's incredible! We walked through 3 sets of rather huge and heavy doors and by the third one we were both thinking "this is getting ridiculous" however as we opened the third door this massive 16th century Viking ship appears before you! The Vasa was on its maiden voyage in 1628 when it sank killing most people on board. The ship the lay in 32m of dirty water for over 1 hundred years before it was raised up from the deep and was cleaned up and started being preserved. Now it stands in a museum built with the correct climate and lighting in order for it's preservation to be optimal. The ship is huge with over 500 carvings and decorative items which each symbolise something or other - such as the crouching Polish noblemen under the catheads (wooden structures which help keep the anchor pushed away from the side of the ship to prevent damage) which symbolise the war between Sweden and Poland in the 1620's.
The museum is awesome it has a number of different mini exhibitions which all relate back to the Vasa, such as the other items found of the ship, skeletons of people found as well as was figure heads of the people (how they possibly may have looked), and a model replica the ship itself.
Once we had absorbed as much information about the ship we had lunch at the restaurant in the museum, Chris had 6 tastes of Sweden which consisted of lots of fish, shrimp and egg and a very cheesy cheesecake, and I had meatballs with ligon berries which I have to say was delicious! Who would have thought meatballs and sweet berries would go together so well!!
Check out the pictures of the Vasa!
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