Baltic Cruise, Part 1: Sweet Sweden

We were excited to join y parents on a Baltic Cruise to celebrate their 50th (GOLDEN!) anniversary, which occurred last month.  It took us from Copenhagen around the Baltic sea (eight countries over twelve days--all new places for the kids) at some really lovely ports. My parents and our kids have different energy levels and different interest points, so we ended up doing different port activities, but we enjoyed plenty of afternoon-evening time together. 

Welcome to the Sapphire Princess (which held something like 2600 passengers)!

We had wonderful weather in Visby (pronounced "Vis-boo") Sweden, which is on the island of Gotland and is known as the "City of Roses and Ruins" and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

We walked around the charming old town (a medieval city dating from the 13th century and a former Viking trading hub), including the very well-preserved walls encircling the city ("ringmuren") with close to 30 towers, and found many ruins and roses! 

Sankt Katrin (St. Catherine's), a 13th century church!

Towers and gates around the old town.

The kids enjoyed climbing the stone walls. 

The kids found a little lost bird, which they named "cheep cheep," which followed us around a bit thinking we were their mothers. 

The Botanical gardens bordered the seaside and had lots of roses!

We then took a cab to the Lummelunda Caves, which was discovered in 1948 by three adventurous teenaged boys, who kept the cave a secret for several years as the explored the cold depths.

The taxi even had this built-in booster for little kiddos like Niall!

The Mouth of the Cave

We took a 40-minute English tour of the cave which explored difference chambers like "the chapel" and informed us about some of the flora (bats, fish!) and fauna (even a little fern) inside, along with the different mineral formations.

After Visby, the ship sailed to Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, the most populous of the Scandinavian countries and "Venice of the North." I had visited Stockholm with my friend Laura about twenty years ago but it was great to be back!

We rode a quick ferry across from the port to one of the city's 14 islands, Djurdarden, which houses the Vasa Museum (among others like the ABBA museum).

The Vasa is an old wooden ship dating from 1628, which sank on its maiden voyage about 1300 meters from where it left Stockholm's Old Town and was dug up 333 years later from the harbor. Due to the low salinity of the brackish harbor water, it was remarkably well preserved!

Skeletons on board (about 30 people died). 

We then walked to the nearby Skansen Open Air museum, the largest in the world, which houses many old buildings from chapters in Sweden's history, as well as some more kid-friendly attractions.

Belltower

Schoolhouse

The outdoor zoo park included many Nordic animals, like reindeer and moose (the wolverine, arctic fox, and Scandinavian black bear were hiding)! Unfortunately, we missed petting the baby goats, which Iver discovered later was possible!

European bison

We took the boat back to Gamla Stan (the old town) and strolled around near the Royal Palace, before getting a narrated harbor cruise and then returning to the ship.  We had warm (70-80s!) and sunny weather and really enjoyed our ports in Sweden!