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Summer is the time of year to escape New York, and the summer of 1997 had the many hot and humid days that I wilt under.

The Men Here Are Gorgeous

Tony
2004-01-28 10:31:37

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scene. Which I did for a long while, as I listened to lovely string music coming from one of the restaurants.

On my last full day in Stockholm, I planned to go to that big bookstore near my hotel, and to go to Skansen, Stockholm's unique park filled with numerous museums, an amusement park, an open-air folklore museum, a zoo and all sorts of other attractions. I found a couple of interesting books at the bookshop, including an architectural guide to Stockholm. I walked over to Norrmalmstorg to take the special antique tram to Skansen. This is the only tramline left inside the city itself. The tramcars are a nice pastel blue. It was a quick but fun ride to Skansen. Like all Stockholm parks it had the lushest greenery I've ever come across, with enormous majestic trees. I took the tram deep into the park and decided to walk back toward the city. There was much too much to see, because Skansen is too big. So I thought I'd just look at the things I'd pass along the way, and go in to just a few. One of my stops was the Nordiska Museet, which is in a very impressive building, with an enormous main hall that looks like a Viking longhouse (except much bigger!). I admired the outside of the Biology Museum, which is built all of wood, like one of those stave churches found in some rural districts in Scandinavia. I went in to the Skansen open-air folklore museum, which I only saw a little of. It's enormous. It has buildings from all over Sweden, with people performing the daily chores of living from whatever period the building represents. I could've followed some of the flaxen haired farming lads around for a bit...There are live animals at some of the buildings as well. It all seems very authentically done. It wasn't kitschy at all.

Kitsch is in Skansen too: at the amusement park, but I skipped that. My final fling was a tour of the Gustav Vasa ship, a sunken boat from centuries ago, refloated and ...