scubacruiserx2

If there's a down side to the Rick Steves it's thateverybody is doing his suggested walks and so they have become very crowded . We wish that we would have walked old town first and then went to the city hall . Here's 2 points mentioned in his book , the obelisk and a sand pit used for boules .

Also mentioned is the statue of King Gustav III .

There are plenty of other photo ops to be found

Near the statute is where we boarded the HoHo boat

And point H is where boarded .

We ate at this cafe on our last visit here

But that was a long time ago !

We then heard a band coming

And there was a guard there , but his bayonet was't fixed

But it was a different story outside of the palace .

After our tour of the city hall we walked back toward our meeting point at the opera house .

And this is where we entered Gamla Stan , the old town

With it's window dressing

And it's narrow streets

And this strange thing . "What's a phone booth" ?

Do you think that the artist liked cats ?

In the Queen of Lake Malaren , the Queen occupies symbolically , the center of the world and has the city of Stockholm on her lap . To the West is the Statute of Liberty and an American flag on top of a skyscraper and , further East , the Eiffel Tower .

On the opposite side is a tiger and elephant and in the far East a Mosque and a flag from Turkey .

The mosaics were installed in this room in 1921 - 1923 .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Hall_(Stockholm_City_Hall)

We paused in the courtyard before going to the old town .

It may have been asked but I did not see it what type camera did you use.

Hello and thanks for the question . The last 3 photos of the post which you linked , and the food photos are from my little , pocket sized Sony RX-100 III . The on site photos like in Stockholm , or on the ship are from a Canon DSLR model D 6 . They both have large sensors and price tags . :eek:

Once again your pictures make me want to do take a Baltic cruise!!! They are beautiful....perhaps Celebrity or Princess will offer itineraries and dates that will work for us when they bring out the new ones in November or December!!:)

We hope so Gracie . A TA /Baltic , B2B is hard to beat ! :) :D

Wow..that is just gorgeous!

Thanks Jen , it's pretty amazing ! :) :D

Pay no attention to the room behind the curtain !

The golden Hall

18 Million mosaic tiles and pieces of glass

The focal point of the room is the Queen of Lake Malaren , which occupies the end wall .

This hall is my number one reason for coning to the Stockholm City Hall .

After leaving the Council Chamber we walked through the linear Prince's Galley toward our next major stop - The Golden Hall .

There was a beautiful tapestry there which I photographed - but I wasn't supposed to . I thought that the icon meant NO flash , but in looking at the photo , I think that it it meant NO photography . So I don't feel comfortable using the photo .

On the one side of the gallery is a fresco

While on the other side , a number of windows facing the lake and the city .

The skyline distortion through this window reminds me of a Dali painting

And the end of the fresco means the beginning of the Golden Hall

Before we went upstairs I noticed this small plaque on a wall of Alfred Nobel who invented dynamite .

8 million bricks were used in the construction of the city hall .

Our first stop on the second floor was the Council Chamber

The following is translated from the Swedish Wikipedia article :

Council Hall located on the east side of the Courtyard, opposite the Golden Hall . The City Council meets every three weeks in the council chamber. The hall also has a public gallery to the public with seating for about 200 people.

Architecture and decoration

Orientation Plan.

Council Hall's interior is kept in red, warm colors. The 19-meter-high ceilings can be discerned between the exposed rafters , which are designed with inspiration from the Viking era . At the top is light blue clouds and sky motif that reinforces the impression of headroom.

City Hall was designed by architect Ragnar Östberg . The furniture in the Council Hall and the Council Hall (the anteroom to the council chamber) are designed by Carl Malmsten and textiles are designed by Maja Sjöström , for takmåleriet was Filip Mansson . The clock in the stands is played by Ostberg and manufactured by Linderoths urfabrik . It was a gift of Stockholm urmakarmästare.

The ceiling and back wall

Ceiling detail

The English tours of the city hall were scheduled for every half hour and they accepted Euros . Our tour began in the cavernous Blue Hall .

The Blue Hall (Swedish: Blå hallen) is the main hall of the Stockholm City Hall best known as the banquet hall for the annual Nobel Banquet, and also used for state visits, student balls, jubilees and other large events .

from wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Hall

Here are some beautiful photos , and a story from last years Nobel Prize Banquet .

Princess Sofia

Princess Madeleine

And lastly , Queen Silvia of Sweden

The full article can be found here :

http://royalnewssite.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-nobel-prize-banquet-2015-at.html

As an interesting story from rock history , ABBA debuted the song Dancing Queen , on the night before Silvia Sommerlath married King Gustav XVI of Sweden . It was performed for them , and seen here , by ABBA in the Royal Swedish Opera House in 1976 :

Strangely enough , it was the same summer in which I had met my dancing queen , Pat .

Plurre dropped us off near the return meeting point for the shuttle bus to the Eclipse - The Royal Swedish Opera House .

It's a beautiful area , just across from Gustav Adolfs Square

We wanted to walk to the Stockholm City Hall for a tour with a few photo stops along the way

The city hall is the tall building behind Pat and Tyler

There is a pedestrian friendly walkway which passes safely beneath the motorway .

And across the street from the city hall is the stunning , modern Stockholm Waterfront Conference Center .

Your photos, as always, are wonderful....enjoying tagging along with you!!:)

Super Gracie ! You can see why we wanted to do a TA/Baltic B2B .And thanks for saying hello . :cool:

Fantastic review scubacruiserx2!

It feels like we are there cruising with you!

It's very interesting to read, even though this is my neck of the woods.

 

 

 

This is one of the Stockholm-Helsinki ferries. It departs in the evening and arrives the morning after, stays in port during the day and then back again the next night. You can bring your car onboard if you want. For being a ferry it's rather nice.

Here are some photos from one of my trips with this ferry:

http://www.cruise-addicts.com/forums/threads/photos-from-a-baltic-ferry-cruise.241790/

 

Looking forward to the rest of your cruise review!

 

/Erik

Hello Erik , thank you for writing and your encouraging words . I would also like to commend you and excellent review : Photos from a Baltic ferry cruise ! You did a great job and have some excellent photos !! I especially like the night photos . Did you use a tripod ? Also may I share a couple of your photos here , so the readers can see what we're talking about ?

Thank you for taking us inside of the ferry , and what a great idea to be able to take your automobile along ! I hope that the readers will look at it when they have some time , and I hope that you will share some photo reviews and photos for future visitors to Stockholm , here on CC ! :) :D

From the video, it looks as a very late change of plan, as so few buses were waiting.

Were you told the reason for the change of port?

I'm not sure if it was a change of port , but I'll tell what we did see and hear . Where we thought that we would berth is Stadsgarden # 167 , seen here with the NCL ship . It is about a 30 minute walk to Gamla Stan , the old town , which is seen in the distance .

Closer to old town , in berth 160 , was a Viking ship . Old town is a 15 minute walk from there .

This photo has old town to the right , out of the photo .

In between is a brick building , Fotografiska , a photo museum . Just above is an flat overlook with 4 flags where I wanted to climb and take a photo from ( which I didn't get to take ) . And so in this map below , the ships should be closer to old town with the museum between them .

On the Hoho boat that I took the photos from were some people from the Emerald Princess . Their ship could not enter the archipelago and so they went to a port more distant than ours , requiring about an hours bus ride ! :(

As we approached the Stockholm harbor , Pat woke Tyler and took him to the buffet breakfast .

Our plan was simple :

1 .Berth at point E

2. Rapidly exit the ship

3. Use our pre - purchased HoHo boat tickets , following the blue route and after exiting the HoHo , walk to our points of interest .

As we were approaching our berth it , it didn't look quite right :

Recognizing the problem , I hurried down to buy shuttle tickets , just in case . We had been told on the ship that we could walk to the city by following a blue line painted on the ground after we exited the terminal area .

We were some of the first people to leave the ship and walked quickly to see if we were near the HoHo boat , and I stopped to take a photo quickly .

Tyler came running up to me and explained that Pat's card wouldn't allow her to exit the boat . We backtracked and talked to security to find out what was going on . After about 15 minutes she exited and is seen waving in the center of the photo .

By the time that we arrived at the pick up point , there we several hundred people in line and no buses on the horizon . We thought that we would cross the street and see if we were in the right place for the HoHo , or walk the 20 minutes to town , which we had been told on ship . After 20 minutes we stopped and recognized our demise . A man standing nearby asked us , in English , if he could help . After we explained , he told us that it was a 20 minute ride from there !

He asked where we were from and after telling him , he explained that his sister was married to an American and now lives in the US . He then asked if we would like a ride to the city ! As we chatted along the way , we found out that he had visited Florida and liked to SCUBA dive ! What a fortunate meeting !! Before he dropped us off at the Opera House , he also told us that he is partner in a catering service and gave us each a bottle of water .

And so we want to say thank you to Plurre - our Guardian Angel in Stockholm !!!

It took almost 5 hours from the time we entered the archipelago until we left the ship .

And we weren't alone

We spent some of the time reviewing Rick Steves popular Northern European Cruise Ports .

And enjoying Eggs Benedict in the big room before Tyler woke up .

Earlier we reviewed the Beatles Celebration tribute band on the Eclipse . I saw on the www today another band who has an absolutely spot - on John impersonator.

His version of You've got to hide your love away :

I thought that I was watching the real John Lennon !!

As soon as Cafe al Bacio was opened we and a couple of other Americans from CC were there for our fix

And with a 10:00 arrival , we could sit and enjoy it there while chatting with the fellowship of the coffee ring

This is where we prefer the Princess International Cafe to the Celebrity version . The Princess IC is open 24 hours a day !!

Time for some photos

We passed very close by this island

And here's the video clip :

I wish that I knew how deep the water was at this point .

Our pilot soon bailed out

Leaving us to follow the other ship(s) ahead of us

We headed down for a different angle and some liquid stimulation

However , at 6:40 Cafe Al Bacio was still asleep .

As we were going to sleep on the night before Stockholm , an announcement on the PA informed us that due to the high wind , a ship of our size may not be able to sail through the Swedish Archipelago !

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_archipelago

I was up about 4 am and it was already light outside . And as I looked through our front window , our ship slowed almost to a stop , just outside of the entrance of the archipelago where there was another ship .

Would they (and we ) go in ?

A video clip :

I headed out on to the balcony ( It was COLD and windy )for some more photos .

And we were in !!

The first structure on shore

Back inside , where it was warm !

Wow - that must have been amazing!

It was ! After entering it we stopped and picked up the band . The land along the canal was flat , mostly farmland and people would ride along with the ship on bicycles and horse drawn carriages on the road next to the canal . They would wave different flags and hands and yell greetings to us as we went along . All of the photos that I have from that trip were film and so the photo , is a photo , of a photo . :confused:

Not sure how to tell you this, but I don't think you went under the Orsund bridge!! Your picture is actually of the great belt bridge which is the other side of the Island that Copenhagen is on. If you google pictures of the two bridges you will see that the bit at the end of the suspension is different. I believe that there isn't sufficient clearance for large cruise ships to go under the Orsund bridge! This means that if you are coming back from the Baltic and calling at Copenhagen, you have to go all the way round the west and north of the island to get to Copenhagen. Sorry!

Oops ! :o

Thank you for the clarification as we had not used this route before .

On our last trip to the Baltic in 2006 , we used the Kiel Canal both ways . And the NCL Dream had to flip it's funnel , to clear the bridge , while the band played on ! :) :D

We were told that we would be sailing under the Orsund Bridge just after midnight and that it was something to see .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%98resund_Bridge

It's a bridge which connects Copenhagen , Denmark and Malmo , Sweden .

We went to bed early and I slept restlessly . After looking at the clock I saw that it was time and jumped up in time to see the bridge right in front of us through our window ! And after throwing on my clothes and grabbing my camera , I ran up forward and up to the Solstice Deck . It was packed ! and there was no place to take a good photo . Plan B was our balcony and as I was entering our cabin door I heard a very loud , audible Oooooh , from above as we slid beneath the bridge . Drat , I missed it !

And by the time I reached our balcony , this was the best that I could manage . Not my best photo , but something to see !

The article from Cruise Critic

Sushi on Five Replaces Bistro on Five Across Celebrity Cruises Fleet

June 10, 2016

Celebrity Reflection's Bistro on Five

(9:40 a.m. EDT) -- Celebrity Cruises is replacing its popular creperie, Bistro on Five, with Sushi on Five, after a four-month test onboard Celebrity Reflection. Three ships, including Reflection, Celebrity Millennium and Celebrity Silhouette now have the Japanese restaurant, which offers for-fee sushi and cooked items.

Sushi on Five will be rolled out to the rest of the fleet as follows: Celebrity Solstice (July 1), Celebrity Infinity (July 24), Celebrity Equinox (August 6), Celebrity Constellation (August 28), Celebrity Eclipse (September 17) and Celebrity Summit (October 16).

The entire Sushi on Five menu can be found on Cruise Critic's Celebrity forum. Appetizers start at $4 and include chicken ginger gyoza ($7) and beef tenderloin tataki ($9). Hot pots and noodles range from $9 to $12; sushi, sashimi and nigiri range from $4 to $12.