#10 Cruising The Baltic with #Fred Olsen’s Balmoral - Stockholm

Stockholm Skyview!

Since my time in Stockholm wasn’t long, I opted for a city tour with the added highlight of a ride in the Skyview and then had time for a short stroll around the old town before embarking the ship once more.

There was a minor time constraint at Stockholm that hadn’t yet happened on this cruise, but did occur on my Greenland cruise last year. The Balmoral ship was at anchor a short way out from the harbour at Stockholm and anyone leaving the ship had to be ferried by Balmoral ‘tenders’ back and forth to the shore, a journey of only a few minutes. This was incredibly well-organised by Olsen representatives, on the way to the city and there was only a slight wait of some ten minutes in a queue to return to the ship.

Like other cities already visited on this cruise, Stockholm has many beautiful buildings built in the classical styles with pastel facades. However, one difference in some of these buildings is that builders in Stockholm had (have) access to local stone, and granite is a popular building material.

Stockholm is another city that has many islands (14) connected by bridges (57) across bodies of water, like St. Petersburg, Copenhagen and Tallinn. Our guide, however, was fond of telling me that it’s really only 2 masses of water that have to be crossed in Stockholm -  a lake and the Baltic Sea.   

I really enjoyed the commentary as my coach made its way around the islands, one in particular that I’d like to have spent more time on. This was a small island that houses many museums including a Viking Museum, The Abba Experience, and numerous other small museums. My guide was also at pains to tell me that Sweden has no Viking remains of note. No Viking ships have been found, and nothing else that she considered to be substantial Viking remains - unlike those that have been found in Norway and Denmark.

My Skyview experience was similar to many other lifts and city tower-top viewing platforms that I’ve visited, all of which give a circular view of the cityscape from the top. My main impression on overlooking Stockholm was that I didn’t expect the city to be so flat, though with some 7 million inhabitants (according to the guide) I’m sure they’re quite happy that their bridge building didn’t need the additional infrastructure needed to wend around foothills as well.

The Skyview, however, does boast of itself as being a unique feature. The gondola scales the outside of the World’s biggest dome. It comes to rest for some 6 minutes at the top and a 360 deg panorama can be appreciated by Skyview visitors. I’m glad that the day was only a little cloudy because the view really is very good from the top.

The Skyview Dome is part of a complex of four arena spaces that house many different forms of entertainment. Ice hockey, football, major concerts and gigs are only a few of the options for entertainment in these huge spaces.

After my coach tour dropped me back at the harbour-side there was time for a quick walk around the cobbled streets of Gamla Stan- the old town of Stockholm. The ones I wandered onto were narrow, mostly pedestrian and full of coffee stops and eating places. Since I had to be in the queue for a ‘tender’ back to the ship by 3 p.m., I opted not to eat lunch out in case it took too long.

Slainthe!