Stockholm with Jake's Parents

Our first official visitors, Jake's parents, were here for about two and a half weeks from the end of May to the middle of June.  They were with us for a few days and then they were off on their own for a few days before coming back to hang out with us again.  We had a great time showing them around Stockholm and going to a few new places in Sweden together.

Jake's parents flew in on Friday, May 30th.  We hung out that morning for a little while in our apartment and had some lunch before Jake headed to the Vasa Museum with his parents.  The Vasa Museum was the first museum we went to last year when we were here for 10 days in June.  The Vasa Museum is about the warship Vasa which sank on her maiden voyage and then sat on the bottom of the Stockholm harbor for 333 years before it was recovered.  It is neat to see how big the ship is and how intact it was after all that time in the water.

I met up with Jake and his parents after the museum for some dinner in Gamla Stan.

Janet and I had Swedish meatballs, mashed potatoes and lingonberries which is a very traditional meal here.  The boys tried a few types of pickled herring for an appetizer.  We also walked by St. Jacobs kyrka (St Jacob's Church) so we stopped to take a picture.

The next morning we visited City Hall which is on the edge of Kungsholmen.  First we did a tour of the main part of City Hall and then we finished by going up in the tower of City Hall.  Janet's parents visited Stockholm two or three times and there is a picture of her parents at the top of the City Hall tower so we wanted to try to take a similar picture but unfortunately they've added bars to the top so the view isn't a pretty as it was 20 years ago.

Found a picture of Ken smiling!

We grabbed lunch and then headed to Drottningholm Palace which is where the royal family lives.

We took a bus to the palace and then a ferry back to City Hall.  The lilacs were in bloom and so pretty around Stockholm and the palace so we made sure to get a few pictures of them.

After seeing the palace we headed to Södermalm for dinner at Hermans.  We tried to book a table but they weren't taking any more reservations but they had a drop in room we could try to see if a table was available.  We ended up finding a table inside which was great.  Hermans was a restaurant Janet found in a travel book.  It is a vegetarian restaurant and it was really good plus the view was awesome.

After dinner we went on a walk around our apartment by the water.  We've been trying to go on walks after dinner each night and we wanted to show Jake's parents where we usually go.

Janet and Ken enjoyed trying out the fun places to relax by the water.  On the way home we stopped by a park and played a little.  If anyone with kids wants to visit us there are lots of fun parks by our apartment!

The next morning we went to Gamla Stan and toured the Storkyrka (Big Church) in Gamla Stan.

Our next stop was Skansen which is an open air museum, similar to a bigger version of Cow Town for you Wichita readers, that has different farmsteads and other building from different parts of Sweden.

We had some fika bread and then we walked around.  We watched a glass blower and looked at some old farmsteads.  We had lunch on a blanket in the grass and took a quick nap before some ducks woke us up :).

Squirrel Park. My favorite part of Skansen :).

Jake's parents headed to Hamburg, Germany the next day for four days before coming back to Stockholm.  We had a great first three days showing them around Stockholm.

Our next few days with Jake's parents included National Day and a trip to Uppsala and Carl Larsson's house in Sundborn.  We also went to Grinda with them before they headed home.