Today our plan was to head to Drottningholm Palace, which is the private residence of the Swedish royal family. The palace has extensive grounds that we thought would be fun to explore. Our plan was to find some food to take to the palace for a picnic. On our way to get provisions, we came across another great manhole cover (something we’ve had a bit of an eye for since 2017).

Along the way, we decided to stop at a church we’d been seeing for the past couple of days – the Klara Kyrka. The interior of the church dates to the late 1500s, though the spire is much newer. It was constructed in the late 1880s.

Onward! We soon reached the Östermalm Saluhall, which is a large indoor market.

We got some great recommendations on some local cheeses and also picked up a delicious looking quiche. Throw in some fresh bread and the apples we grabbed from the breakfast buffet at our hotel, and we had a feast! From the market it took us about an hour to get to the palace – a short walk to the local train followed by a quick bus ride to the palace grounds. We quickly found a bench and tucked into our picnic.

Well fed, we headed off to explore the palace grounds.

The garden reminded us of an English garden, which was no accident. The garden is in fact called the English Garden. That’s what King Gustav III wanted when he had the garden created in the late 1700s.

The oaks were particularly evocative of some of the trees we remembered from Blenheim Palace in the UK. Along the way we stumbled on the remains of a maze. I put my phone camera on a timer and threw it in air to get a sense of the layout. It kind of worked.

We meandered our way back towards the palace proper, though we did not go inside. I’m sure that the royals would have loved to have seen us, but it was starting to get late.

The palace is located on yet another island, so we decided to take the 4 pm water taxi back into town.

We thoroughly enjoyed the short river cruise. The local Swedes are clearly very connected to the water, with houses lining the banks and sail boats of all sizes.

After about 45 minutes, were back in downtown Stockholm. We docked near the Stockholm city hall, where we had a good view of a monument to Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson. If there was a Swedish version of Braveheart, it would probably be about Engelbrektsson. He led a rebellion against a Danish king, who at the time controlled all of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland. Engelbrektsson’s rebellion is seen as the start of Swedish independence.

Once off the boat, we headed to yet another small island –Riddarholmen. There, we saw a church by the same name, which is the resting place of Swedish royals from the death of Gustavus Adolphus (of Vasa fame) in 1632 until the 1950s.

From Riddarholmen, we headed back to Gamla Stan. We had just enough time before dinner to visit the Nobel Prize Museum.

The museum has an interesting collection of since related artifacts. I found the cufflinks below particularly amusing. When Adam Reiss won the Nobel Prize for physics in 2011, he had them made for himself and the other 18 members of his research team. The cufflinks bear the inequality “q₀<0,” which explains something about the expansion of the universe. Duh. Reiss now works at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is located at Johns Hopkins University, just down the road from our Maryland home.

Speaking of local scientists, I also looked up Kary Mullis, who won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1993 for his work developing the Polymerase Chain Reaction, which today is better known as “PCR.” It’s a process that is vital to lots of genetic research. More importantly, Mullis and I both graduated from Dreher High School in Columbia, SC. I was sorely disappointed that his bio didn’t mention Dreher, which is why I’m glowering in the picture above. Then again, I graduated the same year Mullis got his Nobel Prize, and I don’t think anyone at Dreher even knew it. By many accounts, Mullis was a bit bonkers.

Having elevated our minds a bit, we wrapped up our day with a quick meal at a relatively forgettable restaurant near our hotel. But the beer was good and worth remembering.

It was another full day and another good day.

-Will