24052019
The ship booted is pretty early in the morning. And they killed our WiFi that morning so we couldn't figure out how to get to apartment.
We sniped wifi from the boose cruise terminal to order an Uber. Thank goodness they have them here. We got taken to the immediate neighborhood of our apartment. We are staying in the Gamla Stan neighborhood, which is the oldest part of Stockholm.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamla_stan
The original fortress and the current palace are on the island.
Given that it is so old, it is predominantly a pedestrian area so our car could only get us so close.
That's ok because it was only 0900 and we can't even think to drop our stuff at the apartment until 1100. So we squatted in a local cafe that had WiFi. We began planning out our day drinking coffees, and then beers waiting to hear back from the apartment people's on when to drop our stuff.
We spotted our dinner locale, and how easy it was to tour the palace museum complex.
After waiting the appropriate amount of time we got into our apartment to secure our stuff, we headed out to the Royal Palace.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_Palace
It's a neat museum complex, you buy one ticket and it gets into 4 subordinate museums. We started with the Royal Apartments, where previous Swedish Kings/queens lived. It is still used today for ceremonial purposes, including recognizing new ambassadors to Sweden.
The lighting isn't great sorry.
From here we went into the Royal treasury. This was obviously in the basement of the palace, because that's the most secure place to keep crowns and sceptors and such. I don't have any pictures, because it was strictly forbidden, and I was intimidated by then probably high school aged docents.
From here we hit the armoury, but that was under maintenance so all we saw was the Royal carriages.
The next museum was that of the Gustav IIIs antiques. The swedish king Gustav III reigned in the late 18th century, and was actually related to Russia's Catherine the Great (I'll write about her later, i need to catch up on the cruise days).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gustav_III_of_Sweden
He travelled to Rome incognito to buy art, but everyone knew who he was, so they still probably upcharged him.
That piece right there is a statue of Endymion (who has a cool story of his own
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endymion_(mythology) ).
Gustav purchased it from some art dealer in Rome, and at the time everyone thought it was from maybe the late 17th century. And until recently everyone just figured it was indeed
300ish year old. When in fact it actually dates back to the 2nd century.
And the final portion was the Tre Kroner.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tre_Kronor_(castle)
This was pretty neat, the museum was built into the excavated portions of the castle. As with most palaces/castles it has been expanded upon and partially destroyed over the years. The museum traces the development of the structure while providing snippets of history of the larger Swedish kingdom.
Above you can see he earliest iteration that could reasonably be described as a castle, and below the castle at it's height in the 1700s.
Completing our museum run for the day we wanted to go to dinner, but the place wasn't open yet. So we went to an Irish bar for beers and bar snacks. The food was ok, but the building was fascinating.
We went into the basement and it was huge, it sprawled much larger than the footprint of the building above, but none of it was uniform. You had to duck under doorways, step up uneven floors, and squint through ill-lit hallways.
After wasting enough time, we went to dinner.
http://www.restaurangbrinken.com/
The food was fantastic. We opened with a knäckepizza, a thin crispy rye bread with cream cheese spread, with peaches and pumpkin seeds, and a balsamic vinaigrette reduxion drizzled over it. It was a little sweet, and a little savory, very interesting. We also got the smoked reindeer with horseradish on rye. Reindeer is a little less gamey than deer, I would describe it as if deer were domesticated like cows and fed well, they would taste like reindeer.
For the mains my mom got the pulled boar burger, burger is a bit of a misnomer, I think it's a miss-translation, it was really a pulled meat sandwich. The boar was rich, and they used a very sharp mustard that proved a solid combination. My father got the wild sausage, which was combined boar, reindeer and spices. It was very spicy. Laura got the swedish meatballs, pork, and slathered in a tasty mushroom sauce.
But really, I got the best meal. I got their pork stuffed dumplings. It was exceptional. I am worried that the frequency with which I describe something as being "one of the best things ive ever eaten" in this blog would lead out to believe that I use that term fleetingly. In reality, we have done a good job finding good restaurants, and making the right choices at said restaurants. The pork was ground and perfectly browned. The pork had spiced folded in, dominant flavor of clove or nutmeg I'm not sure, I'd have to re-smell both spiced to determine which. The dumplig dough was thick and rich enough to support to wholesome flavors of the pork, it was soft enough to not need chewing.
I would highly recommend you come to this restaurant if I Stockholm, hell if you are within 50 miles off this city come in and eat here.
We went home and staved off the it is long enough to finish this post.
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