Day 23: Stockholm

Today was our very last day of contiki! Everybody found it a definite struggle to get up but somehow nearly everyone made it to the bus on time. We took off and half the group including Clare and I got off at the Stockholm Town Hall. We had a tour of the Town Hall including the Golden Room which is floor to ceiling covered in tiles of gold. It was interesting to hear about the Stockholm parliament which sits at the Town Hall and is composed of 51 males and 50 females, completely by coincidence as it’s not a rule which I thought was really interesting and fantastic. We also saw the hall and ballroom where the Nobel Prize Banquet and Ball is held.

After the Town Hall tour we were dropped at the Central Station where we said goodbyes to our guide, driver and the majority of our group, Clare and I grabbed a quick coffee and wifi to work out how to get to our hostel before we went to drop the bags off at the hostel. We then headed back into the Old Town (Gamla Stan) and to the Sweden Royal Palace where we saw the changing of the guards. It was really good to

see. The marching band was fantastic and I found it so amazing how quickly and much they marched while playing.

When the Changing of the Guards was over we headed over to the Royal Church (Storkyrkan) and paid to go and look inside. As well as being an active church, it is also where the heir to the throne gets married. It was different to many churches that I had seen before as it combined a whole lot of architectural elements from different periods including large red brick columns throughout the middle of the church. The floor was also different as large proportions of the floor were made up of large gravestones with people buried underneath which you couldn’t help but step on which felt a bit strange.

Next up was the Nobel Museum which was the highlight of the day. It is a museum dedicated to all the Nobel Laureates and Alfred Nobel and had information and artefacts on those who have won a Noble prize. We also had a tour of the museum which was really interesting and I learnt that the

Prize for Economics is not actually a Nobel Prize but is a Prize by the National Bank in memory of Alfred Nobel. I have previously learnt about a few people who’ve won the prize for Medicine and Chemistry at school and uni so it was fun to learn more about them and which year they won their prize etc including Brian Schmidt, the Vice Chancellor of ANU.

Clare and I then walked through the Old Town and caught the bus back to the hostel where we checked in and then went searching for a supermarket. We ended up buying a whole lot of yummy food including gravlax, camembert and prawn salad and having a feast before we headed back to our room for a restful night.