Day 3: Stockholm - Where Important Project Management Lessons are Learned

We slept in to about 8:00 this morning, got dressed, had another charcuterie filled breakfast at the hotel, and then set out for a day on Stockholm.  First order of business was getting Dawn new shoes.  After she got to London she realized that her sneakers had a hole in them.  The shoe store didn’t open until 10:00 so we had to kill about 30 minutes walking around.  We happened upon an open air market and I was initially intrigued by what wondrous bounty of fruit was on offer.  When we got closer I learned the horrible truth.  The many stalls of produce were not burdened by fruit and veggies but mushrooms!  So many kind of mushrooms (and some berries)... but mostly mushrooms.  Bleh.

After a new pair of shoes we set off for an exciting day of museum hopping.  The first museum of the day was actually the last one we didn’t make it to yesterday.  The ticket we bought for the palace yesterday included entry into four different sites (Royal Apartments, the Treasury and the Tre Kronor Museum, Gustav III's Museum of Antiquities, and Riddarholmen Church).  We never made it to the Riddarholmen Church, and the ticket was good for 7 days, so we started there today.  The church started as a monastery in the 1200’s, and then it was a parish church, but it hasn’t been an active church for a long time.  For the past couple of hundred years it has been used a burial site for royalty and people of note.  The floor was originally cobble stones and now is entirely graves.  It’s also the place where they display the coat of arms of knights of the Royal Order of the Seraphim who have died.  The coat of arms list the date of induction and the date of death, which explains why some of the dates are awful close together.  In the 1970’s they reorganized the order and now it is only bestowed upon foreigners… which helped explain some of the foreign sounding names of the knights.

After that, we walked around Gamla Stan a bit and eventually made our way to lunch at The Hairy Pig Deli, which featured house-made sausages and, you guessed it, charcuterie.  I had no idea that Sweden was going to be filled with so much charcuterie.  I’m digging it. In addition to our sausage we had moose lasagna, house olives, and spicy pork empanada.  The place as tiny and had tons of charm.  Using the restroom involved making your way to the basement via a tiny-ass stone spiral staircase.  I wonder how old that building was…. My guess.  OLD.

After lunch we decide to walk to Djurgarden which is an island east of Gamla Stan that is home to a bunch of museums (some of which are closed on Monday).  We did get to visit Vasamuseet which was a museum that I was excited about.  In the late 1950’s they discovered and were able to recovered a well preserved Swedish warship from the 1600’s.  The museum houses the warship and tells it’s story… and it has a pretty great story.  Dawn was initially a little skeptical, but once I told her it was a ship that they kept adding more and more stuff to, then they launched it and it promptly sunk...like, before even leaving the harbor, she got interested.  Basically it’s a cautionary tale about how all the money and craftsmanship doesn’t matter in a big project if there is scope creep, an unwillingness to say "no" to power, and an adherence to strict deadlines.  Basically the king of the time wanted the biggest warship, and amongst other royal flourishes, decided the warship needed two gun decks.  They had never built a ship with two gun decks before…. But they built it, and it was fabulously unstable and sunk right after it was launched (it just fell over in the water and started to sink…. In calm weather).  I also dug that while the museum is well laid out, and does a good job telling the story and displaying the ship, it’s also an active preservation site.  Instead of hiding the preservation work still being done on the ship, they opt to make it obvious and you can see people working on it while you’re walking through the museum.

Next up Dawn opted for the ABBA museum which was practically next door.  This was an entirely different kind of museum.  It’s a mix of focusing on the pre-ABBA career of the singers, and then swaps over to a series of interactive exhibits that let you try your hand at mixing ABBA tunes, auditioning for the band, singing on stage, dancing, making a music video, etc.  It’s an interesting concept.  The last bit of the museum is a large collection of gold albums and ABBA stage costumes.  I left wondering what sort of response an ABBA tune has on someone who works at the museum and has to listen to the timeless classics on repeat.  

After museum gocking it was about dinner time and we had reservations at a place called Speceriet.  The menu concept was something between tapas and main dishes.  The dishes were intricate and well constructed.  They made good use of a mandoline to include thin slices of vegetables with sauces and other interesting texture elements.  I was pleased with the meal and can’t complain with our Stockholm dining experience.  

Lastly, we retired to our hotel and got a couple of cocktails to enjoy while writing about the day.  I’m having a cocktail with mezcal, 16 yr Lagavulin, lime, and a chili pepper.  It’s both smoky and spicy.  Interestingly, the bar here as jars full of dehydrated limes and grapefruit slices that it uses as garnish.  That’s an interesting trick.