Northern European (Viking Homeland) Cruise

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We are about to visit a lot of countries we have never visited before.  On our Viking Homeland cruise, our first stop is Stockholm Sweden, and it was a bit scary as we know no words of their language.  All the signage is only in Swedish, and listening to it doesn’t help.  But, the people are very friendly, and new words come easily.  With very little effort, we learned Hi is Hey (Swedish) and Thanks is Tack.  How hard is that?!?

Our first excursion was a waterway tour around Stockholm.  

The city is nicknamed the Venice of the North, and while there is a lot of water, islands, and a few canals, there are no gondolas.  We are in the land of the Vikings, so we were more interested in their fighting ships.

600 years after the Vikings found their way to America, this was the closest representative Viking ship I saw in two hours.

Living in a desert as we do, it was still a great experience being on the water and seeing the Stockholm shoreline from a boat.  Much of the shoreline is populated with modern buildings that remind me a little of Swedish furniture.  

Like IKEA furniture (Swedish), the apartment buildings asre simple in design and solely about function.  Thankfully they do believe in balconies.

Our eyes are more pleased by the historical look.

While waiting to shove off on our boat excursion, some young Lady Godiva ladies came by handing out handfuls of Godiva dark and milk chocolate samples (free).  Seems like one small piece of Godiva chocolate costs a couple dollars and they are wheeling around a full and deep wheel barrow and handing them out for free.  Those free chocolates were enough to win me over to ‘favorable nation status’ for Sweden.

And BTW, we already had the word 'Skoll' in our vocabulary.  So we knew one word of Swedish before we got here.

We both loved the sights and stories of Sweden.