Ferry to Helsinki Finland

It's common in Stockholm to take an overnight ferry trip back and forth between Helsinki Finland, Tallinn Estonia, or Riga Latvia. You can easily travel overnight in a cabin, spend the day in another town, and return back home in your same cabin. The ferries are more like small cruise ships heading to a single destination. They have restaurants, duty free shops, a dance show, a band, and a karaoke bar. Watching late night karaoke of predominately Finnish songs was definitely a new experience. The Silja Symphony ferry to Helsinki is one of the nicer ones with an inside promenade for the shops and restaurants. It was recently remodeled so it was particularly nice for one of these ferries.

Museum of Medieval Stockholm

There's a great free Museum of Medieval Stockholm just north of the Royal Palace. I finally visited it today after a year and half of being here. I tend to visit attractions when I first arrive at an assignment or when time is running out before the next move.

The museum was built underground around the findings of an excavation. It includes part of the original 16th century stone wall and some cool recreations of medieval Stockholm. There are also some detailed models and maps showing the evolution of Stockholm from medieval times. Here's some pictures of the frozen lake side of Gamla Stan and the outside of the museum before some of the museum itself:

Athens Greece

I spent the transition to 2016 in Athens Greece. I was fighting a cold the whole time but it was still a great trip to see yet another city and country I've never been. I read a lot about the Greek mythologies when I was young so I always dreamed of seeing the Acropolis, Parthenon, and various temples built for those ancient gods. It's always amazing to be in places with such a long history of civilization and sense of time. I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story...

Making Changes...

Some people live all their lives in the same place and barely leave it for vacation. Some people go to work at the same job and in the same location for decades. Their weeks are all the same and their weekend routines become... well, routine. Some people keep the same friends and associates throughout their entire lives. Many of those people seem comfortable with the continuity they've established. I'm not one of those people.

Christmas Market and Lights

Gamla Stan Christmas Market

Nordiska Museet

Nordiska museet has exhibitions about life and work, trends and traditions, in Sweden from the 16th century to today. It's a beautiful building for the museum which was founded in 1873. I remembered I hadn't taken a pic of the building as I was leaving at the 5pm closing. It had already been long dark since sunset was at 3pm so it's hard to see.

London

It was another midweek holiday and another opportunity to take 2 days off and be out of work for 5 days. This time my nearby European trip was London. I've always wanted to visit and it's just a 2 hour flight from Stockholm, so why not? Life has a time limit so I still plan on doing as much as I can while I can.

I saw lots of touristy things in 4 days of wandering using the London Underground. There's still so much more to see and do that I'll have to go back several times to feel like I've seen it all. Maybe I'll even try to get posted there some day since it's one of those cities I just enjoyed being in. I took hundreds of photos so it's hard to pick out representative samples but I'll try...