Royal Palace Stockholm

Oh Sweden! Spring and temps in the 70s F happened a week ago but now I'm reminded of where I am. Overcast, rainy, and highs in the 50s for the weekend calls for a bit of inside tourism to inside places. Will the temps edge above 70F before leaving next month? We'll see.

Nearly 2 years later and I've finally visited the Royal Palace (Kungliga Slottet). It's not far or difficult to get to in Gamla Stan but it's just one of those things I hadn't gotten around to doing. The ticket includes 4 museums consisting of the Royal Apartments, Treasury (no pics allowed), Tre Kronor Museum, and Gustav III's Museum of Antiquities. There's also an awesome armory museum as a seperate ticket with royal coaches that I've blogged about before which is definitely worth a visit. The palace building doesn't look like much other than a boring big building. It's really too bad the Tre Kronor or Three Crowns castle burned down because that looked much more interesting from the model of it.

Christmas Market and Lights

Gamla Stan Christmas Market

Views Above Stockholm

One last bit of pictures from last week and playing tourist with our tourist friends. (Yes, it was still cool enough for jackets in July) We finally went up in the SkyView on top of the Ericsson Globe Arena. We've been inside the Arena several times for concerts but hadn't gone up in one of the viewing gondolas crawling up the outside of the world's largest spherical building. It's a fun way to see Stockholm! After that we went to our favorite overlook walk along Monteliusvägen for another view above Stockholm and closer to the old town of Gamla Stan.

Sweden Royal Palace Changing of the Guard

A year ago we arrived and we saw the changing of the guard ceremony at the Swedish Royal Palace. Last week we had some good friends visiting us so I soaked up some more of that royal experience you can get living in a kingdom. The changing of the guard is a really cool and somewhat long ceremony with lots of marching back and forth and a band. I already posted pictures here last year but it's interesting enough to post some more. Their marching is interesting with how high up they swing their stiff arms. I'm glad I never had to march that way because being out of step would have been that much more obvious.

First Work Week and Gamla Stan (Old Town)

I started work this week and am already using a good variety of the training they gave us. I've done a bit of everything including systems administration, communications, and tipping fiber connections on a new network cable run. Tipping fiber isn't something that comes up often, but I was lucky enough to get to do it again in my first work week. I've already been in some other things they didn't teach us, but overall I would have to say the initial training at FSI was well matched for starting work as a newbie. Probably only my classmates are interested in these work bits, so let's get to some fun parts of living in Sweden.