It seems like pretty much everyone who visits Stockholm goes to see the Vasa.  It’s located on the island Djurgården which is a popular spot to visit – plenty of other things to see in the area, including the Nordic Museum and Skansen among others.  From where I was staying, I took a Emelie ferry over to the island.  It was a little non-obvious to me as which ferry I should be getting on at the dock, so I asked a local who was quite helpful in getting me over.  He was on his way to volunteer at Skansen to teach visitors of the history of Swedish Allotments.  Payment was made on the boat, although lacking a chip and PIN card I did have to have the attendant run my card on a swipe machine rather than the kiosk.  Once we arrived I visited the Vasa as well as the Spirit Museum on Sweden’s love/hate relationship with alcohol.  On the path I walked I visited it first.

As I recall it was a bit pricey, maybe a go if you already have a Stockholm Card but a more questionable spend outside of that unless one has some interest in alcohol and Sweden’s relationship with it.  As I noted in my Tips for Stockholm article, to this day it has effected where alcohol is sold and my airbnb host noted (and didn’t seem to disagree?) with the belief that Swedes can’t handle their drink.  Perhaps because much of it seemed to be about vodka, consumed for many reasons (health, warmth, strength, etc.!)

Quite a bit of government control, rationing, shame, propaganda…

The Vodka Dragon, turning potatoes into vodka to distribute pain and suffering to all the folks in town…

There was also some kind of club scene exhibit here.  Unfortunately all the information and data was presented in Swedish, and on toilet stalls, haha.

This dude is outta control…

Moving on to the Vasa – I arrived just in time for an English speaking tour.  It was more interesting and in some parts differed from the wiki article I browsed.  The ship was one of the first two be built with two gun decks, and suffered from a comedy of engineering and construction errors, only to flop over not much long after it initially set sale for the first time.  What was to be a flagship warship among the fleet turned out to be a rather embarrassing failure.  The ship was pretty impressive looking though!  Yet another shining example of the benefits of pollution (lol) – apparently the residents dumped so much crap into the water that nothing could live down there and ruin the ship.

A model in original projected colors.

Replica gun deck.

Types of cannon shot.

For my Polish friends…

Since I’m a bit of a political and economic geek, and I find currency interesting, I also visited the Royal Coin Cabinet which ended up being a little underwhelming, although unless you are truly into coins then that probably should be expected.  I have been to some other coin and currency exhibits as well and I mostly browse through to the highlights, such as large or interesting or very valuable coins.  I walked back to my host’s place and made this stop along the way.

The famous hyperinflated brick of marks…

Some cool old American currency, which from the looks from them, are from our Free Banking Era.

Sweden also introduced the world’s largest coins, these massive forms of plate money –

They had a piece out on a wooden table for you to lift up.  Wouldn’t want to run to Starbucks with one of these babies…  Lastly, some Nobel Prize medals.