all around the globe

A couple days before Christmas we all went to visit Stockholm to see some christmas markets, the royal ballet and to just spend our last days together before everyone was going home. It was a lovely day and it was amazing to see the ballet!

Then it was time for christmas which was spent at home! It were a lovely couple of days to see family and to spend time together :) A couple of days later I flew home to celebrate new year’s back in Uppsala!

Two weeks ago Daniel and I went to visit the tropical greenhouse, which is part of the Uppsala University botanical garden. The botanical garden constist of outdoor gardens, an orangery and a tropical greenhouse and is the oldest of the country. The greenhouse mainly has plants from arid and tropical regions and has the only ‘rainforest’ in Sweden! 

Last Saturday I finally went out for a little day trip again, and the choice had fallen to see Skokloster Slott! The castle was about 50k away from Uppsala, and as it was a sunny day it was a lovely car trip through the surroundings and countryside of Sweden. 

Skokloster Castle was built in the 1650s by Carl Gustaf Wrangel (every important man in Sweden is called Carl Gustaf!) who was a soldier - which makes Skokloster the biggest privately build castle in the country. Gustaf was one of the richest guys of Sweden and the castle was enormously big and filled with loads of luxury items and weaponry.

In Stockholm we visited Vasa, a museum that is based around a ship. And not ‘just’ a ship, but a war ship from the 1600s with an amazing backstory.

The ship was built by the Swedish king who wanted to sail it to Poland to conquer the place. He wanted a superb war ship with everything you could ever imagine on a ship. It was massive. The building of the ship took two years and it was one of the largest war ships ever. Its first sail would be spectacular. Unfortunately, due to conformation issues the ship sank. In the Stockholm harbour. 20 minutes after its first depart. 

Now comes the most interesting part. Because the ship was so incredibly big (and it was the 1600s!) there was no way to get the ship out of the water, so they sew off the masts and the people just continued with their lives. For 330 years, the ship laid on the bottom of the harbour, without even its exact location known. Somewhere in the 1950s the location was finally found again and the plan of getting the ship out of the water got started. In 1959 they start with getting her out. In 1961 the ship rises from the water.

Immediately the major preservation task start, and for an incredible 17 years the ship is being sprayed with conservations so the wood stays good. Then, the ship is dried for another ten years. During that time archeologists can finally take a look at the ship, put everything together and do research. 

In the 1990s the ship was finally finished and to be visited by the public. The museum displays the ship from all sides and on different levels, you can read the whole story about it and also see how it was to live on such a ship. 

Two weeks ago I had the pleasure to have Maxine come and visit me for a long weekend! It were four days full of seeing things, visiting places and most of all a lot of fun! 

The first day we spend in Uppsala to see our main things; the cathedral, the castle and the botanical gardens. I finally managed to take a decent picture of the cathedral, but it’s so big that it’s basically impossible to capture!