Cruising the Baltic's: Copenhagen and Stockholm

Our first day in port was in Copenhagen and man did it start off badly for me.  I had booked a private tour for our whole group that sounded amazing.  We exited the boat and started looking for our guide.  We looked and looked and finally a lady in charge of tours helped us out and called the number of our guide.  Turns out I had booked our tour on the wrong day.  Epic fail.  I was very frustrated, flustered, and all sorts of other words.  So, we pulled ourselves together and got started touring Copenhagen on our own.  We got on a hop-on-hop-off bus and set off.  The day probably was not as good as it would have been with our tour but we made it work.  Thankfully, no one in the family gave me too much heck about the mix up.

The first stop we made was at the Little Mermaid statue.  She is very famous but we weren't overly impressed.

From the Little Mermaid we continued on to Rosenborg Castle.  Personally, I really enjoyed this castle.  It felt very homey and lived in. It was built by Christian IV as a pleasure castle and houses the crown jewels.  We had fun touring, walking the grounds, and even a little time for playing.

When we finished touring the castle we hopped back on our bus, made a quick stop for lunch and continued on to our next stop, Christianborg Castle and Royal Stables.  

Christianborg is near the center of Copenhagen and the powerhouse of Denmark.  It is over 800 years old and is currently the home of parliament, the Prime Minister's office, and Supreme Court. One of the rooms held really extravagant, bright tapestries.

The royal stables typically house 14-16 royal horses but during our visit the horses were spending some vacation time in open pasture. It was still fun to see the stalls and the royal carriages.

For our final time, we took in the sights of central Copenhagen, looked at the statues under the water, and marveled at the amount of bikes.

Our next stop on the itinerary was Stockholm. This time I didn't have a tour planned but I had everything for the day planned out.  It was a super busy but very fun day. We started first at the Vasa Museum.  This museum houses the massive warship named the Vasa that sank within minutes of its first sailing in 1628.  The ship is in excellent condition and just beautiful and huge.  The carvings on the back were extravagant.  Other sections of the museum had artifacts, cannons, and other items found on board.

From the Vasa museum we walked over to the Skansen open air museum.   This was the first ever open air museum founded in 1891 and brings traditional Swedish culture to the visitors.  It has old farm houses, schools, churches, and other buildings from all around Sweden. The park also offered some great views of the city.

After speeding through Skansen we made our way out and hopped on the hop-on-hop-off boat and rode the boat to the city center.  From there we started the Rick Steves' walking tour and just took in the sights.  Stockholm is a beautiful city. The stops on the walking tour included the smallest statue in Sweden who offered good luck, the old town center where the Nobel Peace prize museum, and a fountain that flowed with drinking water.

We had wonderful days in Copenhagen and Stockholm.