Monkey Business (Stockholm)

There are some fantastic opportunities that arise when you spend three whole nights in one campsite.No, not the chance to do laundry (I know that's what you were thinking mum) but rather, the wonderful opportunity to not wake up at 6am. After a late breakfast at 9am we casually headed towards the train station with a goal in mind: the Stockholm tourist information centre.

After a chat with some friends from our tour group and a mindless wander of the wall of pamplets we dicovered that we wanted to explore the Archipelago Islands, and that the cruise left in 10mins from a port a 15minute walk away.

So we ran!

A mad dash to the port dodging pedestrians, street lights and, most scarily, bicycles (we have learnt to stay far far away from bike lanes) ended with us actually bolting past the boat. But don't worry, we realised only 200m later and made it aboard. And after all that the cruise debarked 9minutes late.

The archipelago islands of Sweden are 40 000 small islands outside the city of Stockholm. We sailed past large islands, as well as smaller ones used mostly for residential and industrial purposes and even some that were unoccupied, finally to arrive at Vaxholm an hour and a half later.

Although Vaxoholm is mostly famous for its fortress, we decided to give it a miss and instead we explored the island and wandered the tiny lanes and gravel roads, going past houses made of wood (apparently so they could easily be destroyed in times of war).

We felt very Swedish by treating ourselves to a frika - roughly translated to mean a catchup over coffee and cake- and icecream on the dock which we shared our with an inquisitive duck.

This would prove to be the first of many animal encounters for the day. After sailing back to Stockholm we ventured over to Skansen Park. The only the way to describe Skansen would be as a 'Sweden through the Ages' - think a cross between Skippy wildlife park and an Old Sydney town. Over 100 years ago a Swedish guy decided that the best way to preserve Scandinavian history would be to bring it all to one place - literally. Thus an actual 14th century schoolhouse stands right beside a windmill from 16th century.

The main purpose of our visit however (really the only purpose) was to track down the fabled Maypole on the Mid Summer festival day that it was and dance merrily around it, all for the sake of a few pictures. On our search we were distracted by the promise of an aquarium. You suppose this to mean marine life right? Well there were fish... next to the lemurs and baboons. 200 photos later (ok the pygmy marmosets really needed to be documented on film) we left the species-confused zoo to continue to search for the maypole.

While we never managed to track down the maypole, we did manage to stumble upon the Scandinavian wildlife section. You mean there was more? Yay! Wolverines and reindeer were cute, and we were so so excited by the elk (moose) but the real highlight was the european bison. We are easily amused.

So while we never managed to find the Maypole (we searched for ages however we only found folk dancing) the day was a complete sucess. Oh, and one more photo...