July 23, 2015
Today was our last day in Stockholm. We spent the day doing some stuff that we were planning to in the past two days but didn't have time to.
We started off by doing the modern Stockholm walk as suggested by Rick Steves. We followed the walk until close to the end and decided not to finish it because it wasn't exciting and it was time to go to the royal palace to catch the changing of the guards ceremony.
Kungsträdgården (king's garden) fun
Dunno what's up with the rabbits. It looks like one is dead and the other rabbit is shocked or mourning the loss
Found a tree with several hearts hanging from it. Got closer to read, cute idea..
Fika (coffee break) time at Starbucks!
Saw this sign...lower right corner is zoomed in below
Since we didn't have a chance to enter the German church yesterday, and we had a few minutes before the ceremony, we decided to go and check it out.
It was really interesting because the pulpit (where the preacher stands) during the device faces the sides of pews. It is definitely not deaf friendly. Then Abby found a room with one chair and told me it's where all the deaf people sit to use an interpreter during the services. Just thought it was funny
Pulpit facing the pews' sides
After checking out the German church, we headed out to the royal palace to see the changing of the guards. We saw the band coming in but didn't stay for the entire show. We learned our lesson from buckingham palace :)
People waiting for the show to begin
The interesting thing about the band and soldiers... They are visiting officers from different parts of Sweden. They don't live in Stockholm so it's more special for them to be able to march.
After they passed through, we walked over to city hall to catch the boat to drottningham, where the royal family live full time. We thought the ticket office was at the other end of the gardens so we walked through the gardens only to find that the ticket office was near the palace. That's all right, we got our exercise in and got to see so much cool things (including scaring Abby once Hahahaha)
as we arrived, we just happened to see the changing of the guards. It was much more interesting than the one at Buckingham palace. More visual. 4 soldiers marched up to this area, one walked up to the old guard. The old guard gave the new guard her walkie talkie and they switched places then the old guard joined the group. So cool to see!
Lake on the British side of the gardens
The baroque gardens. One of the Kings back then saw a French palace and decided that he wanted drottningham to have some French gardens. The result is this.
The gardens remind me of a race course on wii Mario kart :)
View from top of the waterfall looking down
There were several green posts holding a wire dance to keep people away from specific areas. I noticed that the tops of the green posts have crowns on them... So cool!
Hydrangea flowers... My favorite!
Can you imagine having this view all the time??? Beautiful!
We sat on the top deck on the way back to the city. It was a bit windy and cold for a few minutes then it got warmer under the sun. The boat ride took one hour.
View of drottningham from the water
Stockholm is made of many many islands. Going on the boat allowed us to see many of the islands. Beautiful!
We made some stops to drop off/pick up passengers. On one of the stops, I saw 2 kids fishing and thought it was cute .
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