Friday morning, we arrived in Stockholm, Sverige (sveh-REE-uh). (It troubles me a bit that we Americans so cavalierly change the names of other countries and cities -- e.g. "Sweden," instead of "Sverige." It's no wonder some Europeans think Americans are arrogant -- and most of us aren't even aware of the correct names.) First, we boarded a "tender."
The small boat, above, is called a "lifeboat tender." It serves as a lifeboat if needed, but is usually used to transport passengers to shore when the port is too shallow to dock the cruise ship. These "tenders" hold over a hundred people comfortably, so it isn't as small as it looks beside "huger." It was less than a 10 minute ride to the dock and the first picture, below, shows the tender that took us there. 7 hours later, we rode another tender back to the cruise ship. Notice how the ship drifted in those 7 hours.
Not only was our ship unable to dock, it was also unable to go to Stockholm. The town where we disembarked was Nynäshamn, a small town (14,000 people) about an hour south of Stockholm. We had to stand in line at a "convenience store" (the only place to buy anything in the little town) for about an hour to acquire train tickets. Then we rode the train 30 minutes to Västerhaninge, a small suburb of Stockholm (15,000 people) where the Stockholm Temple is located. Not only did we visit the Temple, but we also had a nice chat with the head groundskeeper and learned that he had attended Alta High School as a foreign exchange student in 1993.
We got back on the train and rode another 30 minutes to Stockholm. When we got to the central station in Stockholm, we asked for directions to our sightseeing destinations and were told that we had to catch a tram at the other end of the train station. Well, Stockholm's train station is nearly a half mile long -- with stairs, escalators, and turnstiles -- so we spent about an hour traversing the station. And, when we got to the other end, we realized that we really didn't have time to do any sightseeing, so we bought some lunch, walked back through the entire station, and boarded the train back to Nynäshamn. So our sightseeing in Stockholm consisted of a tour of Stockholm Central Station. Gwen did get a couple of photos (below) of the Central Station restrooms. We had to pay $1.50 each and it was one big room of stalls -- no separation between men and women.
We got back to Nynäshamn with a little time left, so we visited the "House of Chocolate" (ChokladHuset). I read that they had provided pralines for the Nobel Night Cap every year since 2006, so I assumed it was a huge operation. Well, it's a small town and the "House of Chocolate" turned out to be a small room in someone's house...... but the chocolate was VERY good.
I also got a picture of the nearby boat harbor.
Then we returned to the ship and I finally got a picture from far enough away to see the entire Regal Princess.
