Walpurgis Night

Had a reasonably comfortable night on the train, arriving about 10am. Bought metro passes, then went the 4 stops to the hostel and dropped our gear. Back to Centrum, and visited the Tourist Information Centre to organise the things we should see.

Started with lunch (the Stockholm Big Mac Index is about AU$8.20!), then went on a 2.5 hour sightseeing tour of the city to get our bearings as its a bit too big to do that on foot which we normally try to do. Saw all the major sights on the bus firstly, including the castle, parliament, old town, Bjorn from ABBA's house, the Vasa Museum and so on, but we'll visit them on foot in the next couple of days.

Then they put us on a boat and showed us some of the interesting sites in the near archipelago. Sweden has hundreds of islands, and we looked at a few of the near ones.

Back to the hostel to check in and have some tea, then we went back on the metro to Skansen. It's a very large municipal park that is part open park where the king used to hunt, part zoo, part performing area, and part historical village - a bit like Sovereign Hill. They have transported a house or other building from every culture and part of Sweden, so you can view them all together. Today is Walpurgis Night, the last night of Winter here, and so they sing, recite poetry, and light a huge bonfire to scare away the ghosts of Winter. We joined in the fun, after checking out lots of the buildings in the twilight.