Friday July 3rd, Stockholm and Blidö

     Our flight from Chicago arrived at Stockholm's Arlanda airport on time after an 8 hour flight. Cruised through passport control with no problem. We collected our baggage and Maude (the wife of Karl's cousin, Lars) met us at the arrival area.  She took a cute photo of us but lost her camera the next day.  Maude drove us into Stockholm in Brum-Brum, a 1998 BMW, to Lars' apartment to drop off our luggage and show us around the neighborhood. More on the apartment in a later post.
     We walked to the subway--maybe a 5 minute walk--and took it to the T-Centralen, the main subway hub in Stockholm.  We walked around the old town, Gamla Stan, had a coffee and prinsessentårta, then watched the changing of the guard at the Royal Palace.  We walked around central Stockholm a little more to get our bearings, then went back to the apartment to get our belongings and head to Blidö.
     Traffic out of Stockholm was heavy.  We stopped at a very busy supermarket in Norrtälje, northeast of Stockholm. American food is a very popular theme. They had a large Texas barbecue section with ribs, pulled pork, and a huge variety of BBQ sauces. (In a later grocery visit we saw a shelf section devoted to tortilla chips, taco shells, salsa, tortillas, etc.) We then took two short ferry trips to get to Blidö.  This part of of Sweden is called the Stockholm archipelago.  It is made up of hundreds of islands (one is Blidö), some big and some small, some connected by bridges and others by ferry.
     The ferries are run by the Swedish government and they are free to use. This was my first time on a ferry in a car and I was really fascinated by them.  The ones we took run on a set schedule for most of the day/evening, then on an on-call system late at night. I think it was every 30 minutes.  The first ferry was between the islands of Furusund and Yxlan. This ferry took about 3 minutes to cross. Then we drove across Yxlan for 1 1/2 minutes (it is a long and very skinny island), and got on the next ferry. This ferry to Blidö also takes about 3 minutes.  it was then a short drive to Lars' and Maude's summer home.
     Karl and I relaxed a bit while Maude did some work, then we cooked steaks on the grill and had salad.  We went to bed around 10 p.m.  Photos can be seen here .