Being rained on in Stockholm
Sep. 4th, 2007 07:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dangermousieWe had a very soggy day today, complete with hail. Booooooo!
On the plus side, in between of getting soaked, we saw a Royal Palace (on a separate island). Very ornate, a lot of battle paintings and portraits of men in grey wigs smiling at women with double chins. Everyone seemed to have been named Carl Gustav or Gustav Carl. I wonder how they kept each other straight.
Andrew wouldn't let me take some of the furniture home. The most random decoration, however, were busts of Caesars in the atrium in the second floor. The idea was a good on, but the execusion somewhat flawed, as largely the Caesars picked were famous and good ones: Augustus. Marcus Aurelius, Hadrian...Nero. Yeah, I am very confused how Nero ended up there. Did the sculptor have a sale? Was it the only one left? Was this 'v nagruzku,' was the other option Caligula? Bizarre.
The palace was home to bored guards and tour+guides, a few English and German speaking tourists, and busloads and busloads of Japanese. There were two separate groups, doing two different tours simulatenously, and their tour guide packed them into rooms so tightly, one recieved an almost bewildering impression of a clown car when the room would empty. After all the Japanese dramas I've seen, it was actually soothing to hear Japanese after a sea of Swedish, not that I actually understood much more. (Seriously, dramas gave me a bizarre sensitivity to the languages in question: on the flight to Stockholm from Copenhagen, there were a bunch of Koreans and the language felt bizarrely familiar. Of course, there was also a Chinese sports team on that same flight. All of them (of both genders) quite cute. Not to mention that had to be the most physically fit flight I've been on :P)
We also saw an 18th century theater, complete with same decorations and set+pieces. Quite amusingly, there was a separate part for nobility and commoners. The commoners' part was with unpainted walls and separated by a curtain as the noble theater goers shouldn't be forced to gaze on those icky hoi polloi.
The boat dock (we took a boat back and forth from the island) was right near the building they hand out the Nobel prizes in, so I took a photo as it is the closest either of us is likely to come to a Nobel prize.
On the way back to the hotel, we stopped by a huge huge manga~scifi bookstore in Gamla Stan. I went a litle bit mad as it was so incredibly stocked and largely in English. It had books I can only get on order back home, but here they were on the shelf. I got volumes 2 through 6 of Basara, Tam Lin by Pamela Dean, a Charles De Lint nov and Kushiel's Dart. Btw, does anyone know anything about mangas: Far from Here (I think. It is about a girl transported to a magic place), Princess Resurrection and manhwa Your Lover (based on the life of Appolinaire no less). They looked interesting.
But yeah, there are tons of comics book stores here, odd.
Anyway, we are having a blast.
On the plus side, in between of getting soaked, we saw a Royal Palace (on a separate island). Very ornate, a lot of battle paintings and portraits of men in grey wigs smiling at women with double chins. Everyone seemed to have been named Carl Gustav or Gustav Carl. I wonder how they kept each other straight.
Andrew wouldn't let me take some of the furniture home. The most random decoration, however, were busts of Caesars in the atrium in the second floor. The idea was a good on, but the execusion somewhat flawed, as largely the Caesars picked were famous and good ones: Augustus. Marcus Aurelius, Hadrian...Nero. Yeah, I am very confused how Nero ended up there. Did the sculptor have a sale? Was it the only one left? Was this 'v nagruzku,' was the other option Caligula? Bizarre.
The palace was home to bored guards and tour+guides, a few English and German speaking tourists, and busloads and busloads of Japanese. There were two separate groups, doing two different tours simulatenously, and their tour guide packed them into rooms so tightly, one recieved an almost bewildering impression of a clown car when the room would empty. After all the Japanese dramas I've seen, it was actually soothing to hear Japanese after a sea of Swedish, not that I actually understood much more. (Seriously, dramas gave me a bizarre sensitivity to the languages in question: on the flight to Stockholm from Copenhagen, there were a bunch of Koreans and the language felt bizarrely familiar. Of course, there was also a Chinese sports team on that same flight. All of them (of both genders) quite cute. Not to mention that had to be the most physically fit flight I've been on :P)
We also saw an 18th century theater, complete with same decorations and set+pieces. Quite amusingly, there was a separate part for nobility and commoners. The commoners' part was with unpainted walls and separated by a curtain as the noble theater goers shouldn't be forced to gaze on those icky hoi polloi.
The boat dock (we took a boat back and forth from the island) was right near the building they hand out the Nobel prizes in, so I took a photo as it is the closest either of us is likely to come to a Nobel prize.
On the way back to the hotel, we stopped by a huge huge manga~scifi bookstore in Gamla Stan. I went a litle bit mad as it was so incredibly stocked and largely in English. It had books I can only get on order back home, but here they were on the shelf. I got volumes 2 through 6 of Basara, Tam Lin by Pamela Dean, a Charles De Lint nov and Kushiel's Dart. Btw, does anyone know anything about mangas: Far from Here (I think. It is about a girl transported to a magic place), Princess Resurrection and manhwa Your Lover (based on the life of Appolinaire no less). They looked interesting.
But yeah, there are tons of comics book stores here, odd.
Anyway, we are having a blast.
