May 24, 2013 "Stockholm-The Royal Palace"

I slept like a log last night.  I think we went to bed around 9:30 after our pizza dinner and once Luke made his final decision as to where he would be sleeping, I was out until I woke up around 5:30 a.m.  This morning Luke was at our door at 7:30 and we all went down for breakfast.  The buffet was pretty good and had lots of breads, scrambled eggs, tasty bacon as well as cheeses, fruits, jellies and yogurt.  They also had buttermilk that Peg accidentally put on her cereal.

Luke getting his bearings as we search for our first Swedish cache.

The name of the cache was Barkarby Torg, and nearby was a street by the same name.

After breakfast Luke and I went in search of our first international Geocache.  It was an easy find not far from our hotel.  We were a tad disappointed that our first find was a mini that did not have any treasures to trade with.  Only a log book that was nearly full.  Still we now have a find in another country so we were pretty proud of that accomplishment.

This body of water surrounded the palace.

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Waiting for the parade to begin

Here come some of the guards

The mounted guard

This was the drummer of the band, my personal favorite

Once everyone else was finished with their breakfast we headed out for the day.  Trish, Chad and Ed went to the race track for the day.  The rest of us, Luke, Lily, Sharon, Peg, Aunt Doods and I, went into Stockholm.  We all rode the same train but the race track stop was only 2 stops from the hotel and we went all the way into Stockholm's Central Station. We walked several blocks to the Royal Palace and arrived just in time to have a pretty good spot along the parade route for the changing of the guard in front of the palace.  The most impressive part of the parade was the Band that actually performed while riding on their horses.  The guard change took about an hour and this is done daily at 12:15.

The horse back marching band

After the parade and guard change we toured the palace and then walked into the oldest part of Stockholm called Gamla Stan.  This tiny island once commanded the entrance to Lake Malaren,  The streets here were all cobble stone and very narrow and lined with lots of small specialty shops. We ate a late lunch in the square in front of the Nobel Museum where they award the Nobel Peace Prize.  Lily, Sharon and I had a hot dog from a street vendor and Peg, Doods and Luke had pasta at one of the eateries nearby.  We did a little shopping but could have spent hours and all of our Swedish Kronor ($) and decided that we needed to move on.  We were dragging pretty good as we made our way back to Central Station.  We spent another 10 kronor apiece to use the restroom (about $1.50) before we boarded our train to Barkarby.  If you ever decide to go to Stockholm, by all means invest in the Stockholm Card.  We purchased the 5 day card at $157 and it has paid for it has already paid for it's self.  It entitles the bearer free public transportation on all buses, trains and subways and admission to nearly 80 different museums.  We ate supper at the same pizzeria and now it is time to hit the sack.  Tomorrow we plan to visit the Vasamuseet and Skansen.

This is the Swedish Catholic Church

Lily liked this sign, she called it a fish hand