We knew going in that Stockholm presented challenges to cruise passengers. The chief problem was lack of reliable information regarding how to get from the dock to the city. We heard all sorts of inconsistent things. The most conservative version was that you must take the public transport system, which accepts only Swedish coins, and there is no place to get Swedish coins.

All this was made worse by our schedule: we arrived at 7 a.m., long before businesses are open, and we had to be back on board by 3:30.

Because everybody told us something different, we decided to pay the ship’s exorbitant fee for converting money ($10 charge for getting $35 in kronor) just in case the coins-only story was false.

I still do not know the answer. We walked to the bus stop, where an attendant told us that we could easily walk to our first destination (the shipboard advisor had told us the opposite). We enjoyed a pleasant 20-minute walk through working Stockholm. The dedicated bike paths, raised from the road surface so cars would not wander onto them, were busy. The weather was bright and pleasant. The route was easy. We arrived at the Vasa museum quite fond of Stockholm, despite the confusion about its transport system.

The Vasa is a 17th Century Swedish warship that sank fifteen minutes into its maiden voyage. It settled into the mud in Stockholm Harbor and lay undisturbed for 300 years. In the 1960s the ship was raised and, amazingly, floated on her own keel into a dry dock for preservation. Today she sits in a splendid museum. We spent about two hours there. What an incredible sight! The ship was decorated stem to stern with rich ornate wood carvings, 90% of which survived. I’d call her a work of art, and the biggest one I’ve ever seen.

Just down the road from the Vasa museum lies the Skansen open-air folk museum, a kind of pioneer village displaying Swedish rural and urban life from days of old up to the early 20th Century. Farm houses, animals, glass blowing, furniture making, machine works, a Sami village (with summer tepee and winter cabin on stilts). There were lots of families with young children, but overall very few visitors. We had an excellent Swedish lunch (meatballs, boiled potatoes, and lingonberry sauce) before walking back to the ship.

We did not get to see the old town, but we used our time very well. The two museums were quite enough to convince us that we had visited yet another wonderful city. Copenhagen, Tallinn, Helsinki, Stockholm; each was marvelous.

Caroline, we’ve discovered that you must be part Swedish. The word for “hello” is “hej” (pronounced “hay”). We accidentally said “hay” to the cashier at the Skansen cafe, and she said,”Hej” and started talking to us in Swedish, until she saw the confused look on our faces.

When departing most cities, you just sail out into the ocean, typically past an industrial area. Stockholm is different. From Stockholm, you sail for hours through a narrow archipelago of green islands, sharing the waters with sailboats and speedy little harbor craft. Often the ship passes quite close to an island. Some of the islands have small red and white houses on them. We sat on the foremost sun deck and watched the parade of bright islands on both sides. I imagine sailing though paradise could not be much different.