European Vacation {Day 17} – Stockholm, Sweden

Beautiful, peaceful, enchanting Stockholm, Sweden today! Another country I could spend days exploring. We were able to get off the boat at 9am this morning.  Once again Disney had buses at the port to take us to the main part of the city.  Such a huge lifesaver not having to arrange for a cab or walk a long distance to get to public transportation.  Once in the city we quickly realized that Justin's intended one-mile walk to the Vasa Museum was going to take us much longer than expected, especially at the pace Drew was starting out at.  It's funny we've seen so many kids his age in strollers and it seems so odd since we haven't seen a stroller in years, but I suppose it could be helpful at times.  Drew typically has no problem keeping pace with my fast pace stroll, but he's two weeks into a very active vacation so we can't blame the kid for slowing down a bit by this point.  We're all actually pretty tired.  The walk along the water was beautiful.

Anyhow, as we were passing by a hop-on-hop-off tour stand they asked if we were interested and with a little negotiation we secured ourselves some day passes and soon boarded a boat that took us directly to the Vasa Museum.  The Vasa Museum was a must see on our Sweden point of interest list, but to be honest we really didn't know much about it.  When we walked into the museum with the Vasa ship situated right in front of us it took all of us by surprise.  It was striking.  It’s so big it’s impossible to get a picture of the whole thing so here’s a bit of video.

We explored the various levels of the museum, each offered a different view of the restored vessel and exhibiting artifacts from the ship.  The movie was particularly informative and interesting.  The Vasa sunk on its maiden voyage back in 1628 and remained at the bottom of the Saltsjon for over 300 years, until 1961 when it was raised from it's grave and restored. 

After the Vasa Museum we rode the boat around the city.

We got off at Gamla Stan (Old Town) and were near the palace and able to catch part of the changing of the guards; however, there were so many people that we didn't stick around too long. 

Justin attempted to give us a walking tour of Old Town, but he quickly got turned around and we decided to just walk around for a bit. 

We stumbled upon the Martens Grand, which is apparently the narrowest alley in all Gamla Stan and is covered with graffiti - warrants a walk through, right?

It was starting to sprinkle a bit so we decided we catch a hop-on-hop-off bus and ride around the city.  Problem was that due to a festival of sorts taking place the stops closest to us were closed so we floundered around the city in search of a bus - these are the moments most frustrating to me.  Wandering around aimlessly when there's so much else we should/could be doing.  We finally got on a bus, but traffic was terrible so it took us 30 minutes to circle around a block to get going at all.  That's two hop-on-hop-off cities tours gone bust - London & Sweden.  When the bus got to the pier we decided to call it a day and head back to the ship to get food.  There's so much food in these places we visit, but I can't justify forking out big bucks when if we wait a couple hours we can have all the food we can stomach without any additional cost.  That's tough for me because a large part of what I enjoy about traveling is trying out new restaurants and yummy foods.  Not really feasible with a large family.  Good thing there’s all the ice-cream cones we could ever want onboard.

Katie and Drew ran off to the Kids Club immediately after we got on board.  Jason killed some time doing who knows what until a movie started that he wanted to see and the girls, as usual, we're off doing their own things.  After grabbing something to eat, Justin and I settled on deck to watch the ship leave port.  Sweden is made up of thousands of islands and our ship sailed right through them.  It was dreamy.  One of the prettiest scenes from the entire trip and that's really saying something.  Pictures just don't do it justice. 

We all (less Carly) watched an early evening performance of Disney Dreams - another fun Disney production for the whole family.  We decided to skip our dinner reservation and instead get Katie and Drew to bed and order some room service.  Our sixth day at sea and this was our first room service order - for shame!  I made up for it though and ordered a cheese platter, tomato soup, grilled cheese sandwich, a margarita pizza, macaroni and cheese and a Mickey bar.  Yum! 

Tonight was the first night we didn't set an alarm.  An entire day of rest and relaxation at sea was much needed.

European Vacation {Day 16} – Helsinki, Finland

Today was our latest port arrival time of the week slated for 11:15am.  We were excited to sleep in.  I almost didn't set an alarm, but thought I'd set one for 10am just to be safe.  Good thing I did cause not a one of us budged until then - who knows how long we would have slept.  Vacation is exhausting!

Disney had shuttles from the port into the city center of Helsinki.  We were dropped off right by Esplanadin Puisto, a park that runs through the city which led us through Kauppatori (market square) where you can purchase souvenirs, fresh fruits, fish and flowers.  We boarded a ferry to Suomenlinna, the "fortress of Finland".  Justin is a sucker for old forts.  We explored old bunkers, fortress walls, cannons and drawbridges.

After we'd had our fill of old stuff we headed back to the city to see more old stuff {wink, wink}. 

   

We walked up to Uspenskin Katedraali, which is a red-brick cathedral towering above the island.  Unfortunately it is closed on Monday so we couldn't go inside, but it was a fun photo opp to get a picture of the kids atop it's large rock base.

We walked back through the market to another Helsinki landmark easily seen from all over the city – Helsinki Cathedral, a white hilltop chapel.  We climbed up the steep stairs to get a peek inside.

I would have loved to venture through the city of Helsinki more.  I'm drawn to their Scandinavian culture and could walk through the city for days (preferably not with five kids and a husband).  It felt so much different from other European cities that we have visited.   So while I, for the most part, enjoyed our excursion over to the fortress I didn't feel like I got enough of the Finnish lifestyle and culture that I would have liked.  Let's be honest, by this point in the trip I think we've all seen enough cathedrals and palaces (except perhaps Justin).

Back on the ship there was a Frozen party on deck.  It even snowed bubbles.

We all rejoined for dinner in Rapuzel's tonight.  Having late dinner has been tricky.  We thought it would be good to have some time between getting on the boat on port days and dinner; however, since we're not eating in port we always get back on the ship and head straight to the food.  So we're not super hungry when 8:30pm finally rolls around, but it's dinnertime and there's so much food so we order it and try to eat as much as we can even though it leaves us quite stuffed and slightly sick.  In addition, we're all so tired at that point that wrapping up dinner at 10:30pm feels really late.  Tonight Katie and Drew had apparently eaten enough and we're asking to go to the kids club before the rest of us had even been served our main courses.  So off the two of them went and the rest of us ate, and ate.  The dining rooms have a little program each night, which is fun to watch, and tonight the dessert was pretty impressive - yum!