Stockholm, June 8 / Visby, June 9

I am still amazed at how calm the Baltic Sea has been ... like a millpond. Of course, we still have several days for it to act up. Also, I am sure that we will get our share of ocean motion from the North Sea, Arctic Ocean and Barents Sea before the trip is over.

Today dawned very early (duh) and absolutely gorgeous! There is a beautiful bright blue sky and the temperature is in the high 60s at least. After our separate bus tours this morning, it was even nice enough that we had our lunch on the open Lido deck.

Because we were up quite early for our tours, from our balcony we got to see much of the archipelago of over 24,000 islands and islets along the coast as we approached Stockholm. Many, if not most, of them had houses on them ... sometimes several, sometimes on the little ones, just one house. Most of these are summer houses as, during the summer, and especially at the solstice, just about everybody escapes from the city at every opportunity.

My tour today included a nice harbor tour by boat, since Stockholm is built on 14 islands as well as part of the mainland. Basically we circled the Djurgarden which was originally the king's private hunting preserve with deer (djur), moose and even reindeer, but is now mostly public parks and some private residences along with marinas and a Tivoli Gardens amusement park established in 1883, some 40 years after the Danish one.

After that we reboarded our bus to experience the traffic in the center city. The few places where we stopped for photos also provided opportunities to watch the buses dance as they jockeyed for parking in the narrow streets. The building in the first photo looks like it might be the royal palace, but it is a retirement community instead. The palace itself is in the second photo and has 606 rooms which is one more than Buckingham Palace in London (our guide was proud of this). The royal family of Sweden is well liked, especially Crown Princess Victoria who married her personal trainer, now Prince Daniel, a few years ago.

Here's a bit of trivia: the Swedish consume about 17 kilos of bananas per person per year, the most of any country in the world. No, I don't know why.

This afternoon I went down and cancelled my shore tour for Visby ( pronounced Vees'buh) tomorrow. It's a tender ashore port. That plus a description of a good deal of walking on cobblestones, some steps and a change to a 7:45 departure time just did it for me ... especially that departure time! I'm on vacation! It's hard enough to get going for an 8:30 tour!

There are a number of passengers with canes, walkers, and/or wheelchairs. The woman in the shore excursion office told me that several people have expressed curiosity about where I got my nice Volaris that folds up sideways. So I explained that it was made here in Sweden so that she can pass that along. She immediately commented that I have "the Volvo of walkers." So far it has performed well and has survived being checked through on the plane as well as a lot of being stowed in bus bellies.

Nice sail away this evening ... quite a parade, in fact, led by P&O's Arcadia then us with one of the huge Silja ferries (almost our size) bringing up the rear. It took us about three hours to clear the archipelago with several spectacularly narrow spots to negotiate.

We went to the Indonesian Crew Show which is always good fun, and this time was even better than usual. Our assistant waiter, Imanuel, sang two numbers and did a fine job. The "Thousand Hands" dance was great, and even the story dance about Rama, Hanoman, and Rahwana was very well done. The latter involves an "army" of monkeys led, of course, by Hanoman, and a battle between the evil king Rahwana and the good king Rama. This time they threw in some modern sight gags like doing rock/paper/scissors in the middle of the fight. Everyone had a good time.

Visby

I'm glad I decided not to go ashore today. In the morning the weather was solidly overcast although the temperature wasn't too bad. If we were going to have clouds, I'm glad it was here instead of at Stockholm yesterday. Also, they announced that boarding the tenders was a tad bouncy. I rather suspect that was a precautionary announcement as tender boarding is always bouncy, and the average passenger age is well over 60, but the sea didn't look that bad. Actually, the cloud cover broke up about 11:30 and all was gorgeous again. The last tender back was at 12:30 pm, and we were at sea for the rest of the day.

For those like me who have never heard of Visby, here are some basics. Visby is on the Swedish island of Gotland about 60 miles east of the Swedish mainland. Gotland is the Baltic's largest island (80 x 35 miles) and is rather flat with the highest point being only 100 meters or so. Visby was a major Hanseatic League port, and the city's walls with 40 well-preserved towers date back to 1470. Archeological evidence of permanent settlement goes back to the Vikings in the 9th century, and evidence of humans on the island goes back 5,000 years. It is now a UNESCO World Heritage site.