Day 2: Museum Day in Stockholm

Sensory overload day! What a day! I slept so well last night and was bursting with loads of energy this morning.
Headed out to Gamla Stan for my b'fast, since I vowed to never take the hotel buffet b'fast for the rest of my stay here. There's this nice Cafe on Vasterlanggatan that we saw the other day but it was so crowded that we didn't get to go in during the weekend. The Cafe wasn't even opened at the time I got there (it was already 10am. Man, I love the laid-back Swedish work hours!) I was first in line! There was a delectable spread of Swedish pastries, cakes and sweets at the counter. What an eye candy and it certainly perked me up! I was at a lost of what to order - everything looked so good! I decided to order a bit of everything, well, not everything but 3 of their best-looking scrumptious dessert.
The chocolate cupcake with mint cream was somewhat cold and hard, since the choc ganache-shell had to be kept in almost frozen state. Taste was just so-so; nothing spectacular. Karas & Sprinkles win - hands down. I then moved on to the choc-pistachio role, at least that was what I thought it was (until later today when I got myself a Swedish dessert cookbook). It's actually called Arrak rolls. Arrak is a Swedish liquor used to flavor their desserts. The Arrak Roll is a Swedish favorite - it's actually marzipan-covered chocolate cake crumbs (hey, another rendition of cake crumbs apart from lollicakes!) and dipped in chocolate. It was good, but the best of the three had to be the Almond Torte. The toasty fragrance and nuttiness of the almonds were so prominent in the pastry.....just heavenly! I must try to get hold of the recipe.
After
breakfast sugar overload, I started heading out to the National Museum by continuing north on Vasterlanggatan just to browse through more stores, then headed eastward through one of their tiny alleys (Stora Gramunkegr) where I came across more nice stores


At the end of this street, you will see Storkyrkan or The Great Church. It is the oldest church in Gamla Stan and an important example of Swedish Brick Gothic. The Royal Palace is just next to the church; I took the route that cuts through Royal Palace
and what you see is a spectacular panaromic view of Skeppsholm, the island across the waters, the National Museum

and Grand Hotel.
National Museum was my first stop. It showcases a huge collection of non-contemporary paintings, sculptures, drawings, applied art and design from the medieval times, turn-of-the century right up to the present day.
Although I'm not an ardent museum fan, I must say I enjoyed myself thorougly in the 2-hour self-tour of the museum and well worth the SEK100 I paid!
Next: Modern Museet - the Modern Museum. Just make a left as you exit the front entrance of National Museum and continue south on Skeppsholmsbron. As you cross the bridge, you get open views of the City.


The walk uphill is also beautiful: tree-lined street with gorgeous fall folliage. I'd say that's the part I enjoyed most about my visit to the Modern Museum.


The exhibits were rather weird and infact, some of them somewhat disturbing, really. I mean, I understand non-conventionalism, creativity, artists being "different" and all but c'mon, there was just one too many nude exhibits shown in one too many ways. Lots of items fringing on the dark side







Well, some may say I have no appreciation for the arts. Maybe that's a good thing. I am still perplexed as to why people are so open to such absurb, exotic and mostly erotic exibitions yet remain stubborn when it comes to the beautiful message of God's grace? Anyway, the Modern Museum was somewhat of a disappointment to me personally since I was expecting to see more works by Warhol, Pollock, Matisse and the likes.

Cute folding chairs for convenience of museum visitors (and it's free, unlike the public restrooms around Stockholm!):



Warhol's Pink Cows


After 4 hours, I've had enough of museums. What next?

I decided to head to Grand Hotel and have high tea. Yes! Afternoon high tea. There was an article with great reviews on Cadier Afternoon Tea so I had to try. Ah, feels so good to get back to my luxury world after the long hours of walking and museuming! Tea was scrumptious! The gingerbread cake over-powered the lingonberry cream topping but other than that, everything else was just delectable! My favorite was the very quintessential highlight of any afternoon tea -the scones and orange-whisky marmalade. You can't really taste the whisky but it gives a different depth to the marmalade. Take a look yourself. Need I say more?



































After tea, I headed across Kungstradgarden, another nice park lined with elm trees. Apparently, the trees were so loved by Stockholmers that when the city planned to cut them down back in the 70s, the people staged a huge protest by climbing up and sitting on the trees to protect them from destruction. Maybe that's the start of tree-sitting?









Right at the end of the street, just before you get to Hamngattan, you'll see Stockholm Tourist Center where you can get free maps, City guides and also souvenirs from the Tourish Shop.
Once you get to Hamngatan, you'll see NK. Finally! I get to finally go to NK - the Saks Fifth Avenue, the Harrods of Stockholm. I personally think it's way overrated, well, except for their restrooms on the 4th floor. You pay 5 krognnes, it's unisex and you get to use all the perfume you want (not that I am the type to use generic perfumes or those meant for public but thought it's worth to point out).



Hamngatan is like the Miracle Mile of Chicago or Union Square of San Francisco. All the major departmental stores are located here:Ahlens, H&M stores, PUB (off Hamngatan on Hotorget), Gallerian. Well, a mall, to me, is the same everywhere. Once you see one, you see all. I didn't spend too much time at the malls, coming from USA, the country of malls. Started heading back to Gamla Stan, via Drottningatan. Here's a picture taken on bridge at Riksgatan.

I came across this Jewish dance performers - well, I don't know if they were Jewish but they were dancing to Jewish tunes. It turned out that this was a group of Christian evangelist in Stockholm and they were spreading the Word to the public. I sat down by the stairs and watched them dancing to the amazing tunes, witnessing to passerby. Felt such a calm and peace coming over me - right there, right in the middle of Stockholm, I could feel His presence. Jesus is alive forever more!

Rounded the day with a warm, healthy and tasty vegetarian buffet dinner with D @ Gamla Stan. Nice, cozy little restaurant with homely comforts where you can kick back and relax. Here's where I waited for almost 1.5 hours for D to get off work Oh, what a great ending to a fantastic day.