Our Scandinavia Adventure: Day Seven (6 August)

The buffet breakfast that was included in our room rate was pretty fantastic, and it gave us a good chance to sample some traditional Swedish breakfast food as well as cut down on food costs by essentially filling up on brunch each morning. The cereals were all great, and the cereal bar included nuts and fruit, as well as a selection of milk and yogourt to make your bowl complete (I had mine with “soured milk,” a Swedish cereal staple, and it was delicious—sort of like a plain yogourt with an extra bit of tang):

For our next round, we chose different ingredients to create open-faced sandwiches. With an amazing variety of bread, spreads, fish, cheese, and meat, we had something a little different each day. The left-hand plate below includes what became some of my favourite toppings: caviar, cream cheese, cottage cheese, mackerel, gouda and edam cheeses, and three types of marinated herring (mustard, tomato, and traditional).
We both loved the mackerel, and our first breakfast back in London, Bob said, “How about some mackerel?” but our fridge was sadly without that breakfast treat. For our third breakfast course, we shared a plate of fruit, something I always crave when travelling:
Add a few cups of coffee and juice to that meal, and you no doubt understand why we didn’t need to have proper lunches in Stockholm! We started the day wandering through a few neighbourhoods, where I spotted this fantastic moose-in-the-woods embellishment: We saw a few Ingmar Bergman tributes around Stockholm, including a letter by Bergman to a beloved theatre company in the theatre's window, a framed portrait and candle in Pelikan's window last night, and this secondhand bookshop display:
Other window displays were a bit less serious: We made a stop in Östermalm, at its Saluhall, a food hall that promises "a different, far tastier world"!
Its glorious sign is a reminder of yesteryear,
while the signs surrounding its entrance are firmly grounded in the marketing of today, touting the hall's claim as "one of the world's top ten" foodhalls.
The hall was quite nice, and the food looked great (although the size of the breakfast we'd just eaten meant we looked but didn't eat), but I missed the rush and chaos of my much-loved Borough Market (number three on the list outside Saluhall).
Even the postboxes in Stockholm are cuter than cute!
(I saw a tourist in Gamla Stan mistake them for rubbish bins though: she opened up the mail chute and just as I was about to run over to stop her, she shoved her rubbish against the chute, but clever Swedes have accounted for such tourist nonsense, and although the chute is large, the opening itself is only a narrow slot which provided just enough resistance for the woman to realise her error and take her garbage elsewhere.) Yes another example of pleasing design, this appealing mural lines one track in Stockholm's artsy subway stations (more subway photos to come later in our trip):
Stockholm often boasts about how clean it is, and after getting used to London waters, it was remarkable to see people swimming in the central harbour
right at the foot of Gamla Stan,
whose charms continued to be, well, charming!

(Even the pharmacy windows are quaint.)
To balance our Stockholm experience with our time in Oslo and Copenhagen, we had a look at Stockholm's waterfront city hall,
although we weren't allowed to do so on our own this time, and had to join a tour through the building. The main hall is interesting
in its asymmetry, which was apparently one of the guiding principles of the architect, right down to the different patterns on the columns in the main hall, which are said to symbolise men and women.
It's also where the awards banquet for the Nobel Prizes takes place each year (not for the Nobel Peace Prize, though, which regular readers will remember takes place in the main hall of Oslo city hall). The figures above the doorways
in this majestic hallway
aren't the expected heads of state or other such nobility. Instead, the architect wanted the workers who built city hall to be physically represented in the hall itself, so the busts are of some people who actually made the building possible. The architect, Ragnar Östberg, is also represented in city hall, although not in a way he would have liked:
This unfinished portrait remains incomplete because while Östberg was sitting for it, he saw the work in progress and thought he came across as arrogant in the painting. He didn't feel that such an egotistical portrait belonged in the people's hall, and work on the portrait was stopped. Unfortunately, Östberg died before a new portrait was commissioned, and the city made the (odd?) choice to hang the unfinished portrait in the building after all. The council chambers are beautiful

and I liked the combo desklamps and voting buttons at each seat. With 101 council members, the composition of the council is almost evenly divided between men and women, at 51:50 respectively. Much of city hall seemed like perfect theatre sets onto which I expected actors in period dress to suddenly appear . . .

I was sad that we weren't there at the right time to see this incredibly kitschy clock in action,
but there were plenty of other sights to keep us occupied as we made our way through the building.

The views over the back gardens were lovely,

but I still found myself gazing inwards more than outwards!

Even the coatrack in the entranceway seemed to fit in perfectly with the rest of the building.
When we finally emerged from city hall, we walked around the gardens that we had seen from above, and saw a sculpture that was hidden from our previous view:

We saw the inside of Kungliga Slottet, the official residence of the Swedish Royal Family (no photos allowed inside),
and crossed the courtyard to see the interior of Storkyrkan ("the great church"):

The wooden Saint George and the Dragon dates from 1489 and is said to contain relics of Saint George:

We walked through Gamla Stan again,

and crossed over to Södermalm, where we took the speedy Katarinahissen lift up to a viewing platform
before returning to the water for our second canalboat tour, which gave us a good chance to see how many people were out on the rocks, enjoying the perfect weather.

Our boat returned to shore, giving us an excellent view of city hall along the way,
and I remembered that our tour guide had told us about city hall's restaurant,

where you can eat the same dinner that the Nobel prizewinners are served at their banquet! (You have to order one day in advance and you'll pay CAD$215 for the honour, mind you . . .)
The wall near the restaurant has a Stockholm relief carved into it:
We headed back to Södermalm, and I was very glad to have a camera to record this silent visitor as it floated unexpectedly and eerily across the sky:
We walked around, taking in more parks

and shop windows as we made our way back to the hotel. Who doesn't love the Moomins?

I wanted the carpet on the wall of this shop
and found the Snipp Snapp Snorum book cover to be slightly disturbing . . . what's going on with the dogs?
This shop just about sums up the tempting objects we encountered at every turn in Stockholm,

but this secondhand bookshop wins today's prize for best window display. I thought I'd just take a photo of the owl in the window
until Bob pointed out that there were more owls that also wanted their photo taken,
and this wee lonely owl, perched upon Homer's Odyssey,
was a cute photographic end to another great day in Stockholm.