Author: John Bassett

We left Charlottesville early yesterday evening. I drove to Dulles. Traffic was not bad, though I prefer to do this route in the daytime. At least there was no snow or ice. We filled up with gas at some place near Chantilly, a place nobody would confuse with its counterpart in France, and Google guided us faultlessly to the Alamo car drop. As we waited for our bus we watched some hapless guy accidentally drive his rental car into a light pole. What a way to end your trip! 

We had some issues at TSA because the bar code that AeroMexico had sent us by email was enormously large. When they could not use their scanners the agents were totally confused. We were sent from the Pre-check line to the regular line. John finally suggested that they might take a picture of the scan with a phone and see if it worked. One of the agents was willing to try that and indeed it worked. 

At that point we were happy to be headed towards our gate, but the plane would not board for another three hours. We thought about eating, but not only were we not particularly hungry but all the restaurants had already closed for the night. So we just sat around the gate idly looking at our phones and hoping the wait would soon be over. 

We boarded the plane a little before one o’clock in the morning. We did have exit rows on the  flight, but it was still pretty crowded. We both took some medication and hoped for sleep. 

We woke up a little before the plane landed about five in the morning. After it landed, we took our luggage and went to customs and immigration. As usual, clearing Mexican immigration was fairly easy. We then decided to look for the check in counter for Aeromar to see if we could get our boarding passes and possibly check our luggage. This was also not particularly difficult. We went off to have some breakfast. We had a mediocre meal at Tok, a place that is probably the Mexican equivalent of Appleby’s. 

We were planning to head into Mexico City for an adventure this morning, but shortly after breakfast John announced that he had to check into a hotel. I was disappointed, but I understood that he did wanted to feel better than he obviously did. I noticed some signs in the terminal for “hotel” and I followed them. We found a branch of the Spanish NH hotel chain. They offered us a half-day stay for about 130 dollars. It was more than I wanted to pay, but I hardly wanted to go searching around, either. We took it. 

John slept for a couple hours and took a shower. By this time he was energetic again and all excited about going into the city. I did not think there was enough time, but I was not willing to completely refuse him. He went downstair and talked to the man at the taxi and tours desk. He arranged for a man to drive us into town for lunch, wait for us, and drive us back, all for 500 pesos or about 26 dollars. 

John wanted to go to our favorite restaurant in the capital, the Cafe de Tacuba. Many years ago we slipped into town between flights and had a wonderful lunch there. No such luck this time. There was a huge line in front of the place Our driver stopped at some other celebrated spots in the historic center, but all of them had lines as well. We finally gave us and settled for a branch of the Lion Grill chain. They were at least featuring Chile en Nogada, a famous Christmas speciality, and I insisted John order it.

We were done a little early so we walked around. At the Placio de Iturbide, a colonial place now operated as a cultural center by the National Bank of Mexico, there was an exhibition of “nacimieintos,” the traditional Mexican Christmas folk art scenes. These were charming and beautifully displayed.

Less traditional, but equally beautiful, was this display of angels.

We arrived back at the hotel, packed our stuff, and tried to find our gate for the flight to Puerto Escondido. I went to the Aeromar counter to ask them about the gate. John started to feel sick right about this time and thought he was going to pass out. I asked the agent for a wheelchair for him, trying to explain in broken Spanish about his extremely low blood pressure. I am not sure she understood, but a beefy young man showed up about ten minutes later with a wheelchair. We went to the front of the security line. We were apparently too early to go to our gate, so he took us to the Aeromar lounge. We did not probably have the correct credential for this privilege, but as he was in a wheelchair the woman motioned us to go in anyhow. 

As far as airline lounges go, this was hardly Emirates. There was almost no food and the trash from previous visitors had not been cleared from the tables. I drank some nasty coffee from an espresso machine. John looked at the news in Spanish on the television. About a half hour before the flight was supposed to leave, our young man showed up again with the wheelchair. He took us up and down elevators and ramps and finally left us in a ground floor waiting room. Apparently we were supposed to board a bus to a remote area of the runway and walk up stairs to the plane. Nobody seemed to speak much English around here, and when we were still waiting there when the time for the plane to depart had come and gone I wondered we had done something wrong. But other passengers indicated that they were on the same flight as us, so I tried to patiently wait. 

We finally made it on the plane. It was one of those small jets, probably the work of the Canadian Bombardier firm. Poor John had almost no leg room, but at least the flight was only about an hour. He seemed to nod out. I had to listen to some idiotic millennial two rows ahead of me spout nonsense about how America was fifteen years from a revolution against corporations, an apocalypse that he apparently happily anticipated. 

When we arrived at Puerto Escondido I had an unpleasant surprise. John’s suitcase had arrived, but mine had not. I was not alone. At least ten of the passengers, including the millennial, were also missing their luggage. The woman at the desk initially told us to just come back tomorrow afternoon, but the bilingual passenger threw a fit for me and she agreed that they would deliver it to our hotels. She took my luggage tag. I have no great confidence I will ever see my clothes again. 

We took a taxi into Puerto Escondido. I knew that the town had grown considerably since I was last here, but I was frankly appalled by all the development, particularly the string of hotels and restaurants lining the old surf beach. This had been almost pristinely empty when we first came there. And the Santa Fe hotel had nearly doubled in size as well. 

Our room is in a “bungalow”, a two cluster of four apartments on the other side of the street from the Santa Fe. It classically Mexican construction, concrete, cinderblock, and rebar all painted bright colors and ornamented with faux colonial woodwork and balustrades. At least the landscaping is nice. 

We walked down the honky-tonk strip that now covered my favorite beach in Mexico. John had an extra pair of swim trunk and flip flops though neither of them fit me very well. 

We will see what tomorrow holds. I am thinking that this trip proves indeed that “You can’t go home again.” It seems like a colossal mistake. 

Today was a pretty quiet day. John wanted to go to a meeting, and he found one at St. Paul’s Memorial Church. Because it is located on Grounds — that’s the UVa term for the campus — where parking is nearly impossible, he decided not to take the car. Ellen and I went shopping in downtown Charlottesville. We had no particular problem parking. We found a spot a couple blocks from the downtown mall adjacent to the park with the statue of Stonewall Jackson. Charlottesville has not yet removed its Confederate statues, but it has covered them in tarps. I was certain I had taken a picture of it, but could find it nowhere on my phone. So here is one taken from a newspaper story.

It was much colder when we were there, and the weather was as gray as a CSA uniform. 

Ellen explained to me that ever since the riots this summer downtown has been pretty much deserted and businesses are starting to close there. As we walked around, it struck me that the lack of really interesting shops was also part of the problem, too. We did pick up a couple fairly minor gifts there, but after an hour we had seen all the retail offerings that were available. We decided we would have to hit some of the outlying shopping areas. But we figured we would have lunch first. 

While we were eating, John called to ask some directions. It was beginning to rain, so Ellen jumped in the car and went off to pick him up. He explained that the meeting been cancelled because of the holiday. But another guy had shown up looking for meeting, and so they had held a small meeting of their own. 

John joined us as we went around to the shopping centers at Barracks Road and Stonefield. John slipped off by himself to do some shopping as he had not had a chance to do much before we left Los Angeles. 

We had breakfast this morning at the hotel. Some of the reviews of this place on Booking had praised the morning provisions, while others had disparaged them. I think I was with the latter group. I did not expect much but I was still disappointed. Usually places like this in the south can at least supply biscuits and gravy. Instead here we had rainbow-colored bagels. I have no idea who thought that was a clever idea….

It seemed to take us a while to actually make it from the hotel to Colonial Williamsburg even though they are adjacent to one another, but we finally parked and and began to stroll around our badges. Williamsburg itself is a town and it costs nothing to walk around it. The only charge is for entering the historic buildings themselves, and, of course, that is the reason that most people would come here. The first thing you notice when you arrive is Bruton Parish Church.

Named after a prominent Virginia landowner who donated the funds to build it, Bruton Parish has remained an active Anglican (and subsequently Episcopal) congregation ever since 1677. The church is particularly important to Williamsburg because of its rectors, a Rev’d Dr. W. A. R. Goodwin, led the movement to restore not only the parish church building but all the historical structures in Williamsburg. He initially approached fellow Episcopalian Henry Ford, but after telling the automobile magnate that his cars were destroying America Ford declined to fund the project. Goodwin had more luck — and presumably a bit more tact — with the Baptist John D. Rockefeller. Abby Rockefeller took a keen interest in the project, and worked with Goodwin and the Rockefeller Foundation to do much of the initial acquisition and restoration of historical structures. 

The interior of the church is rather plain as is typical of colonial Anglican structures.  It still retains the seventeenth century tablets with the Decalogue, the Apostles’ Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer. However, the communion table dominates the front of the church instead of the enormous three-level pulpit that was probably there in the eighteenth century. 

With Mike leading us, one of our first stops was the joiner’s shop. 

Dictionaries often give “carpenter” as a synonym for joiner, but in the colonial era the two were distinct. Carpenters framed buildings.  Joiners were the skilled wood workers who made doors and lintels, framed windows and made fireplace mantels. The people demonstrating the skills here, like the gentleman shown in the picture above, were quite knowledgable about the period. However, unlike a place Sturbridge Village, they do not stay in character and pretend to be actually living in the eighteenth century. 

Much of the pleasure of being there on a relatively warm winter day was just walking around the fairly empty streets.

We saw many carriages though we never figured out how purchase a ride in one.

We also saw ox carts. I have to admit that I did not know until I was talking to a woman driving one of these that oxen were just castrated bulls. Of course, I never had bothered to look, either. 

The houses in Williamsburg range from somewhat modest to extremely grand. This was the capital of the colony and the people who lived here were generally affluent. We went through several smaller homes. We were allowed to take pictures freely in some of them and in others were prohibited from doing so. I could not figure out much basis for the difference in policy. 

The grandest house of all was the governor’s mansion. This is the iconic image of Colonial Williamsburg that I always saw in My Weekly Reader.

What they did not show us there was that the place was an armory as well as a residence.

While you might think that fighting native peoples, understandably unhappy about being displaced from their ancestral lands, would be the purpose of all this firepower, it was actually asserting the power of the Crown over the settlers that was the real reason for all these muskets, swords, and pistols. The royal governors were not popular, with a particular local disdain for the last one, John Murray, Earl of Dunmore. 

The house probably does not have any of its original furnishings. In fact, the entire residence is a reconstruction done by the Rockefeller Foundation as the original house burned in 1781. But the reconstruction and furnishing has been done with the benefit of good historical records so rooms such as this dining room are probably pretty close to what was there in 1775. 

The ball room in the back of the palace was one of the most interesting. It naturally featured a portrait of the sovereign, King George III.

It also had two rather large stoves for keeping the room acceptably warm in the winter.

John and I also explored some of the public buildings such as the courthouse. 

The docent here seemed to be doing his best to counter to “isn’t this so cute and wonderful” atmosphere of Williamsburg by stressing how capricious and cruel the legal system was, particularly to women and anybody else who was not a propertied white male. I suppose that the guides here are given a certain amount of discretion in how they present their information. 

Ellen was stuck with the dog for most of this time and could not go into the buildings with us. 

However, she handed Abby off to Michael at one point, and she and I explored the old statehouse together. We had a great guide here.

He seemed to almost be consciously countering the courthouse narrative by pointing out to us how the residents of Virginia, even women and poor whites, had more rights here than they did in England or just about anywhere else in the world in the eighteenth century. We saw the chamber where the House of Burgesses met. This was the place where people like Jefferson and Madison discussed the possibility — and desirability — of independence. 

We also saw the room where the Royal Council, a sort of colonial House of Lords, met. This was the check on the Burgesses’ power.

One thing that everyone admits is NOT historically accurate about Colonial Williamsburg are the Christmas decorations, particularly the wreaths that are found on just about every building during December. 

But these have become a modern tradition that is popular with both locals and visitors and there is a fierce competition to see who can make the nicest wreaths. 

We stayed in Williamsburg until late afternoon and then went in the car to head back to Charlottesville. I am glad we had our two day excursion to this part of the state. 

A few days before we left for Charlottesville, John suggested that we might try to visit our friends Elsa and Carleton Bakkum in Yorktown, Virginia. Elsa is in charge of trainers for Education for Ministry, and her husband Carleton is the rector of Grace Church, Yorktown. This summer when I attended the Canadian Training of Trainers event in Kelowna, BC, John came with me and Carleton came with Elsa. The two spouses spent a day riding bikes around the lake and the smoky Okanagan Valley. 

We left a little after twelve o’clock. Mike drove, but we used our rental car. John and I were both still a little tired, so we wanted a brief stop along the way for a cup of coffee. Searching for something like a Starbucks, Google Maps sent us to a strip mall outside of Richmond where we found Safari Coffee, a ministry of the Journey Christian Fellowship. Ellen and Mike were horrified and wanted us to go on, but John and I cheerfully went in and found that the people were quite friendly and the coffee reasonably priced. I gave them the change for their African missions.

About two hours after we left Charlottesville, we arrived in Yorktown. Before I planned this adventure, all I knew about Yorktown was that this was the place where the British surrendered and the American Revolution ended. I was surprised to discover that Yorktown, Williamsburg, and Jamestown are adjacent to each other. We are going to spend the night in Williamsburg and go to Colonial Williamsburg tomorrow. 

Elsa met us at the parish hall. She explained that this is used for services as well as for social events because the seventeenth century church is so small and the congregation there is growing. 

Elsa explained that much of the art work here is Carleton’s work. He creates using the colors and other idioms of American folk art. This cross on the wall of his office is an example of that. 

Elsa also showed us a small house that the parish owns next to the hall. She has a room in it that she uses for spiritual direction. John liked it. 

The church itself is indeed quite small and so plain inside that it could pass for a Congregational meeting house. But it is one of the oldest Anglican buildings in North America and as such subject to many historical preservation rules.

The churchyard is equally historic with at least one signer of the Declaration of Independence interred there. 

The churchyard seemed particularly melancholy in the late afternoon sunlight of winter.

Elsa then took us on a little walking tour of Yorktown. She explained that this little community has been overshadowed by nearby Williamsburg. But what is here is perhaps even more significant for American history. This house was Corwallis’ headquarters during the siege of Yorktown 

and a canon ball is still embedded in the wall there. 

Despite the cold, John enjoyed walking about

and Abby seems to like her spiffy little winter jacket. 

We saw the rather ugly monument erected in 1876 to make the centennial of the British defeat. 

We drove down by the York River. Abby needed to take a stroll, but I did not need to get anywhere close to that cold-looking water. 

Elsa took us by the Yorktown battlefield. We saw the redoubt where Hamilton had fought. This has become suddenly more popular since the musical appeared. Unfortunately, it was pretty dark by this time and hard to take pictures.

We went to the Bakkum house for drinks and snacks. We met Carleton there and Benjamin, the middle son. We had a wonderful time, and I wished I had taken some pictures there. After that, we went to a restaurant down on the river. Perhaps because of the approaching holidays, it seemed almost deserted. But we had a nice dinner and an even nicer time talking to each other. At the end of the meal, we asked the waitress to take a picture of us.

Tonight we are staying at a motel in Williamsburg. It is nicely located right by the Colonial Williamsburg Visitor Center. It is nothing special, but for less than 90 dollars a night it does not have to be. 

We spent today traveling and it was pretty exhausting. We left Los Angeles just around one in the morning on a flight to Chicago. The plane was packed. Both of us tried to sleep, but it was not particularly easy. We arrived there just before six o’clock. We spent a couple of hours in O’Hare and had some barely edible pastry for our breakfast. Around eight thirty or so, we were on our second flight, this time to Washington Dulles. We had a little more room on this flight, and both of us were able to sleep a little more. We picked up our luggage and found the shuttle to the Alamo rental. In a matter of minutes we were picking out our vehicle and we were on our way.

Charlottesville is about two long hours of driving from Dulles. Most of it is on the same highway, but it is not the kind of road where you can just turn on cruise control and listen to something on the radio or your phone. There is always some kind of “keep left to stay on…” every ten or twenty miles. I was quite alert for the first hour, but for the second part of the trip I had to struggle to keep awake. The monotonous gray and brown of the Virginia winter landscape did not help. 

We arrived at Ellen and Mike’s about three thirty. I think they were up for going out to eat, but we were not. So Mike fried some hamburgers and we had a nice meal. We’re definitely going to bed early tonight!

The summer of 2017 is pretty much officially over. Just for the record, I did want to add some information about a few trips we took after we returned from Europe. This time I, John Pratt, will be the narrator. So, there’ll be lots of spelling and grammatical mistakes along with historic and geographic errors, not to mention some exaggeration.

On Saturday, August 5th we flew to Vancouver, British Columbia and then took a small plane to Kelowna, British Columbia. I’ll spare you the details of the torturous flight on Canadian Air. Let’s just say they don’t have any competition and it shows. We came here because John was participating in an EFM training. Kelowna is in the southern center of the province. It sits in a major agricultural valley bordered by the Cascades on one side and the Rocky Mountains on the other. There is a large natural lake. If it weren’t for the lake it would basically be Fresno. We arrived a day early so we couldn’t get into the conference center. John booked us into a bed-and-breakfast which was kind of a hoot. Scenic Canyon Ranch bills itself as a meditation, yoga retreat center. We had a guest suite that looked like it had been decorated by Liberace and the Property Brothers. We had arrived late so, we checked out the rest of the property in the morning and had breakfast with the other guests. It was a good choice. Friendly – Clean — Spacious.

John had one morning off when the Canadians were doing Canadian things. We went to a place where you could ride bicycles on old train trestles. The trestles had burnt down a few years ago but have been rebuilt.

 The last evening a grand celebration was held at the local Episcopal Church. Pictures were taken. The three American participants were forced to have their pictures taken alone.

 

Pictures were taken.

 

 

 

The three American participants were forced to have their picture taken alone.

 

We flew to Vancouver but instead of just changing planes we spent the night at the Fairmont Hotel. Our Fairmont was located at the airport. It was convenient and even though some attempts had been made to make it look like the one in downtown Vancouver we weren’t fooled.

 

 

 

 John and I rented invisible bikes and rode around Stanley Park. 

 It was very dry.

We, of course, stopped at the local Episcopal Church. We like it because so much local wood was used inthe building. We suspect it is held together with maple syrup.

We had lunch at a highly recommended dim sum restaurant. At lunch I received this picture of Elsa texted to me by Carlton.

                                               At lunch I received this picture if Elsa texted to me by Carlton.

 Just two weeks later we flew to Portland for another EFM training. This time John was the trainer and not being trained. There was some confusion about whether his sister would be there or not. Not at the training, but at their new tiny house that Mike had built in the back yard of their old big house. They had spent the summer in Portland, but it was time for Ellen to return and start teaching in riot central, Charlottesville, Virginia. There was some confusion about making our schedules coincide, but it all worked out.

We had a lovely dinner with Jill and Loren. Bill and Allen joined us for dessert. We saw the finished abode and met the new puppy, Abby.

Next weekend we go to Ashland and the Oregon Shakespeare festival.

Our last day in Stockholm, our last day of vacation! In so many ways it seems sad to have to go back to home. We have had such a lovely time here on this trip and some of the things that await us when we return home are much less interesting than riding bicycles over picturesque islands or touring museums filled with ancient art and artifacts. But I do miss Edie and part of me would like to go back to a bit of a routine as well. Still, there is no choice either way. Home we go tomorrow. 

We decided to see as much as we could on our last day here. We began with breakfast at the Radisson. I may have eaten more bacon and eggs on in the last month than in all my the previous years of my life combined. I just find it hard to turn down the “included” food in the morning when I know I will need to pay for breakfast and lunch. I am sure that I will “pay for” this the next time I weight myself. I am definitely looking forward to getting back to a normal light meal in the morning! While we ate, John and I identified what we wanted to see and do in our last day. We both wanted to see some more of the cultural attractions of the city on our last day while avoiding the tour bus and boat people as much as possible. So we highlighted a few places that seemed interesting, yet a bit off the beaten track.

But before going sightseeing, John wanted to go shopping. He noticed in one of the guidebooks that Stockholm has Europe’s largest flea market. This sounded like absolute torture to me, but I agreed to go along. I used Google Maps to try to find the address, and it was not far away. Unfortunately, apparently there are placed with almost identical names in Stockholm, and the place where my phone took us was a pleasant neighborhood indeed … but not the location of a flea market. We used a bit more cellular data to try to figure out the problem, but discovered that the place we really wanted to be was quite far out, probably not worth the time it would take to go there and come back. 

Fortunately, there was a subway stop nearby and John and I took the train towards downtown. Stockholm likes to boast that each of its subway stations is a work of art and that the whole system is a giant museum. That seems a bit of a stretch to me. Certainly, each station is decorated in some way and has a theme. But I am not sure that making a subway stop look like it is a cave really reaches beyond cute design into the realm of art. It is a philosophical discussion, I know, and I will not be, in an unusual change of attitude, dogmatic about this point. 

Once out of the subway, the phone guided us to the Hallwylska Museet. Built in the last decade of the nineteenth century, this was the home of Count Walther von Hallwyl and his wife, Wilhelmina. Or perhaps it might be more accurate to stay that it was the home of Wilhelmina and her husband Walter. She was the daughter of one of Sweden’s most important timber barons, and she brought the money to the marriage. He had a title from an ancient Swiss family and little more. Even though this was before the time of women’s rights movement in Sweden, money was still power. He moved to Stockholm and became a Swede. 

Wilhelmina had several country estates in addition to her town home in Stockholm. But this house was clearly built to impress the local Stockholm gentry with both her wealth and sophistication, to let them know that the von Hallwyls were not gauche, nouveau-riche parvenues, but  one of the first families of the Swedish nation.

There is an amazing courtyard that must have been the scene of some stunning parties. 

The rooms are decorated in high Gilded Age excess. 

There are the usual drawing rooms for the ladies, smoking rooms for the men, and, of course, a billiards room. 

There was a huge collection of porcelain by various manufacturers although it was nothing compared to what we saw in Dresden — or for that matter, in Natchez. 

A few pieces seemed to date from a less multi-cultural Sweden.

The bedrooms on the second floor were private and therefore less ostentatious. But the notes pointed out that Wilhelmina and Walter actually shared a bedroom, quite unusual for the wealthy in that era. 

After Walter’s death, Wilhelmina willed it to the Swedish government as a museum. It is today a monument to the Golden Age in Scandinavia, a reminder of a time before the pretense of equality became the norm in Swedish society. 

After leaving the mansion, we walked down towards the Moderna Museet, the Museum of Modern Art. We were relying on some guidebooks here, taking it on faith that this was an interesting place. As a general rule, neither of us is particularly a fan of a great deal of modern art. That is not to dismiss all the work done in the last century at all. It simply means that along with many works of extraordinarily powerful and brilliant works there is are many pieces we find tedious and pretentious such as white canvasses covered in white paint and labeled “Untitled (1965).” We did find some interesting things there, but on the whole we were disappointed. We loved the self-portrait by Munch, of course.

The extensive collection of Stalinist posters was as visually appealing as it was morally appalling.

I love to find inspiration for art projects in  these museums. My children cannot paint anything like the works of Caravaggio or David, but they can certain do cut out collages or just splatter some paint about. And I can always talk about form, medium, and color and squeeze some measure of art instruction out of the project as well. 

We took a break after this and went to have some lunch. It had been sprinkling a bit while we were in the museum, but it had cleared up and the sun was glistening on the water. The Moderna Museet is located on a small island which used to be a military base. It is, I suppose, Stockholm’s version of The Presidio in San Francisco. And some of the former military barracks have been preserved and turned into an expensive hotel. We had lunch there in the middle of a charming garden overlooking the harbor. 

After that, we went back to the same building to look at the Architecture and Design Museum. This was not as large as the modern art collection. Much of it appeared to be taken up with a library  and offices. There was a largish temporary exhibition space devoted to a  Swedish designer we did not know. We decided to just look at the permanent  collection. We discovered that this was basically just one large room with a couple dozen scale models of important buildings in Sweden and around the world.

The extensive interpretive material was in both Swedish and English. As I read it, I rather wanted to hear the commentary from my sister. All the material seemed to discuss the importance of creating a harmonious environment where buildings help create community and enable a more humane society. It certainly did not seem like the “starchitect” mentality that seems to prevail in the United States.

At this point, John was tired and we went back to the hotel.

We had been a bit disappointed by the view from our room the previous day, so John had chatted up the nice blonde people at the reception desk and convinced them to change our room so we could see the water. His efforts were rewarded with a room which may not have given the panoramic view of the harbor he wanted, but at least allowed us to see the famous City Hall Tower.

In the evening we went out again. John wanted to go shopping, and although that did not much interest me I did not have any other ideas. As we walked toward the street where all the department stores seem to be found, we passed Ste Klara Kyrka, a big Gothic brick structure I had seen several times before. I noticed that the doors were open and that there was a poster advertising an organ concert this evening. I have to say that this seemed like much more fun than shopping to me, so I went to the concert while John looked for shirts on sale. 

I read up a bit on the church. The Swedish monarchs, unlike the British, were not motivated by theology when they severed the historic ties between the Church of Sweden and Rome. The church was the largest landowner in the country, and the king wanted land and the money. This convent of the Poor Clares which had stood here for century was torn down. When the crown decided to build a Protestant church on the site several decades later, the name of the previous church was retained even if monasticism, particularly communities of religious women, was not at all a part of the Lutheran ideal. The church is a good piece of late Northern Renaissance architecture, and it was interesting to see that the Swedes painted all the ceiling and wall frescoes that the English were busy destroying inspired by Calvinistic iconoclasm.

But back to the organ. When I saw it, it looked to me like a late nineteenth century instrument. When I heard it, I knew I was right.

The concert began with the Bach Toccata in D-minor. While the organist’s command of Baroque performance technique was impeccable, the organ itself was clearly not simply Romantic but French Romantic, something like the great instruments Cavaille-Coll built in Paris about the same time. All mordants, trills, and other Baroque flourishes were lost amid the sixteen foot stops and the reeds. However, the rest of the concert worked more effectively with the instrument. John joined me halfway though the concert and at least he heard a rousing performance of Boëlmann’s Suite Gothique. “Real monster movie music,” John commented as we left.

We walked down towards Gamla Stan, the old city, for a last look around.

John had brought the Rick Steves guidebook, and he had a walking tour with commentary of Gamla Stan. 

It was surprisingly quite good taking us to some places we would otherwise have never seen and explaining the significance of things we had seen before. For instance, we went into the courtyard of the Finnish Church and saw Stockholm’s smallest statue.  

Knitting a cab for “Iron Boy” is a popular pastime, and rubbing his head is supposed to be good luck. We went down nearly deserted alleys that paralleled streets thick with tourists.

We saw where the shoreline had once been when all of Stockholm’s residents lived within the walls of the city. We observed the locks which had replace the falls that once separated the fresh water of Lake Malmara from the brackish water of the Baltic Sea. And we stopped by the statue of Queen Christina to pay homage to Garbo!

John read about a restaurant that appealed to him a little out of the center of town. We found a bus that took us there relatively quickly. It was located on the water. Part of the restaurant was the “boat,” actually a floating dock.

It had wonderful views of the water and the city, but also it was crowded and disco music from the seventies blared. And it was a bit cold there, too, right on the water. But Swedes know how to deal with that.

We chose a seat in the garden on land. John had a burger — he tends more and more towards comfort food — while I had the Swedish version of Belgian mussels. They were delicious!

We have to get up early tomorrow to catch the train back home. I have really enjoyed our time in Sweden, and I hope to come back again and see more of the country. 

This morning, as I stumbled around all our bags in the hotel room, I felt like I was some modern version of the character in an E. M. Forrester novel traveling around the Continent with steamer trunks. And yet, although tourists are always told to “pack light”, there are limits to what can be left home. You have to deal with cool, rainy days as well as hot weather. The are beach and bike days, but there are also more concerts and more formal restaurants. Buying things when you need them may sound good, but it is not always possible to find the stuff you need. And sometimes, like John’s swim trunks in Dubrovnik, it is way more expensive than at home. 

The Rex Hotel is not a bad place. The rooms are clean and the neighborhood is safe. But I also think that in Europe there is this sense that unless you are paying a great deal for a room, you should be slightly uncomfortable. Things are deliberately spartan in a vaguely military or monastic way. It cannot be significantly more expensive to make a soft bed than a hard one. An extra pillow would hardly break the hotel budget. Yet you begin to feel after a while, I only paid 100 Euro for this. I do not deserve two pillows. Or a comforter that actually fits on the bed. Long after sin has been dismissed as an archaic notion, Northern Europeans still cling to asceticism and self-denial. Just ask the Greeks about that. 

At breakfast — one where I felt that we really did not deserve to have more than two choices of marmalade — John and I planned the day. We looked over the starred recommendations in Rick Steves. He almost dismissed the Royal Palace and Gamla Stan, and said that Skandia and the Vasa ship were the must-see sights in Stockholm. Skandia is a collection of historic houses rather like Sturbridge Village. John was pretty sure that we had seen Skandia and loved it on our last trip to Stockholm many years ago. I did not recall that, although I remembered a similar place is Oslo. Either way, we decided to go there. We packed up our stuff and put it in storage. We will be changing hotels today — but more on that later. 

I suggested that we take a bus to Skandia as it was farther than John wanted to walk and the subway did not come close. He was skeptical, but agreed. Most of the busses I have seen in Stockholm have been at least half empty. This one, unfortunately, was the exception. I suppose it was because it was heading towards the amusement park on a warm July day, but it was packed with families. And it was slow as well. John does not do well standing for long periods, but at least he found a spot where the bus flexes so he could try to sit. 

When we entered the park it not only did not seem familiar to me but did not to John either. “Maybe we didn’t come here,” he said. “I don’t remember any of this.” Skandia does contain historic village structures and people are there dressed in period clothes to provide some background in Swedish and English. But it also has a wide array of children’s attractions. There are endless places to buy food. About a third of the grounds are devoted to a small zoo with Scandinavian animals. It is interesting, but somehow the history gets a little lost in all the other stuff. 

But we still had a pretty good time and saw some really interesting things. There were these old “allotment” cottages. After people had moved to the city, they still wanted to grow their own food. So they were given tiny plots of land in the suburbs where they put not only farmed but had a one room house for weekends.

The two old gals who were the docents here were having their lunch break among the flowers and vegetable of their plots.

There were lots of old farmsteads.

and old church,

and a bakery where John bought a couple pastries that looked and smelled better than they tasted.

Some of the farm houses had a special section used only when there was a wedding or a funeral.

These also contained guest accommodations.

On many of the farms, women spun wool and died yarn.

In the “town” section, we had an interesting chat with the docent at the printer’s house.

We were fascinated to learn that they nailed the wallpaper on so that if they moved they could take it with them!

The city workingman’s house was pretty spartan, and apparently a dozen people were probably crammed into two or three small rooms. The only source of heat in the winter was this tiny stove that also was used for cooking.

We were fascinated to see the Temperance Hall. Apparently the Swedes declared war on drinking about the same time Americans did with about the same level of success.

There were gardens both rustic

and formal.

We love all the hollyhocks in Sweden. They really do not grow well in Southern California.

The industrialist who had helped create Skandia moved his childhood home there.

We were not as fascinated by the nordic animals on display, but we were fascinated by the lynx

and the wild boar.

I think this was a wolverine, or maybe it was a ferret. Why can’t these animals wear name tags?

There were birds everywhere.

This stork had no children in tow.

But I think this goose might have had a family.

We decided to have lunch at the first and only place we have seen in Sweden that advertised itself as a smorgasbord. It was not an expensive place, just it was just a little pricier than most of the other offerings, enough that John assumed, quite correctly, that families would go elsewhere. Neither of us dislike children, but teachers on vacation would just as soon spend time with adults. In fact, at times watching the kids was quite entertaining.

After that, we went down to see the Vasa. This is clearly the biggest tourist attraction in Stockholm and it probably should be. The Vasa is the most perfectly preserved seventeenth century ship. King Gustav wanted to have the biggest and most powerful navy in the Baltic. AS part of that program, he spent an enormous amount on a new warship, one designed to have an unprecedented two full canon decks. The ship was to be the pride of the navy. But a few minutes after it was launched the ship listed to the side in the wind and began to take on water through the lower canon deck. Within minutes, the ship had sunk to the bottom of the harbor. The pride of the Swedish navy had never even left Stockholm.  Dozens of men were killed.

Around 1960, Swedish archeologists wondered if they could find the remains of the Vasa. They did so without much problem, and to their surprise they discovered that the soil and the minimal salinity of the water had almost perfectly preserved the ship. It took years, but they raised the ship, cleaned and preserved it, and then built an enormous building around the ship. It is an amazing sight. Some of the ropes are even original, knots almost four hundred years old. 

The color was a big surprise to the historians. Examining the wood they discovered little bits of paint throughout. It turns out that these ships were painted bright colors, almost gaudy to modern eyes. We take color for granted. But when I talked to people in Eastern Europe who had lived under socialism, all of them commented on how everything back then was gray. The buildings were gray, the clothes were gray, the smoky skies were gray. And when they experienced the West, the first thing that struck all of them was how colorful it was. It was an overpowering experience for many. I am sure that this is what the seventeenth-century world was as well. Most people lived in a dull gray world. And there was something almost overwhelming about seeing color. We forget that the Baroque era was obsessed with power. And ornament and color was that era’s version of “shock and awe.” 

So here is the wood as it appears today

and as it was originally painted.

John was feeling quite tired at this point and he did not want to deal with the bus again. I agreed we should take a taxi. I have since learned more about Swedish taxis. The government issues taxi licenses as it does in other cities. It limits competition from ride-sharing apps. But it does not actually regulate the fare as happens in most of the rest of the world. Before taking a taxi, the passenger is supposed to read the posted fare chart and make an informed decision. In practice, this is almost impossible. We certainly had no idea that we were supposed to do this. And we paid for it — a fifteen minute cab ride with a driver who really had no idea where he was going ended up costing us well over fifty dollars! I was livid, but there was not much I could do. 

We picked up our bags from the storage room. We are changing hotels tonight. The Rex was part of the package deal with the bicycle tour. But for the last couple nights I wanted to stay at a big, modern American hotel. I had thought that the accommodations on trip might be less the comfortable, and I wanted something spacious with comfortable beds and a big bathroom for our last couple days. So we are staying at the Radisson Blu Waterfront, a stylish modern building right by city hall. It is probably the most architecturally interesting hotel in Sweden. 

The desk at the Rex offered to call a cab for us. I somehow figured that hotels had a better idea of who the good guys and the bad guys were in the cab business. And I should be grateful for that as this time our ten minute ride was a fairly reasonable twelve dollars. 

The Radisson was everything we expected it would be with one exception. We had a miserable view. Instead of looking out on the waterfront, our spacious comfortable room faced an office tower, one of those depressing structures from the eighties that Skidmore, Owens, and Merrill built all over the world. John went down to the desk to see if the charming young man who had checked us in could give us a better room. He explained that the hotel was full that evening — one of the larger Viking cruise ships had taken most of the rooms for their guests — but promised see what he could do tomorrow. Ah well, at least the bed was comfortable and I had two pillows. 

We spent a quiet evening. Tomorrow will be our last full day in Sweden and we plan to do serious sightseeing.   

It seems like our Stockholm Archipelago trip has been quite short. And I knew it was going to be only five days instead of the seven we had in Croatia. But I did not fully appreciate that we would spend two of them in Stockholm. So, we are coming to the end of this trip feeling like I wanted to see more and to do more. I wish it had been a longer trip. I wish I could have done more riding. I wish I had seen more islands. And I wish I had had a better bike. Still, I do not feel like I was cheated. I saw what they promised and the accommodations were actually better than I expected.

We had a choice today to leave on the early boat or on the later one. The earlier boat went to another island. However, it was not possible to ride on that island, only to hike. None of our group decided to do that, even Steve. Australian John definitely had no interest in doing that, as he told me over breakfast.

But I am hardly going to find fault with that guy as I learned today that he is 85 years old! I am really impressed by a man that age not only traveling the world by himself but doing some of it on a mountain bike. He is an inspiration to me. I want to be still traveling, still active in twenty five years.

John and I decided to see the north part of Utö. This appeared to be a rather short, easy ride on the map. And it really was. It was also extraordinarily beautiful. We were not far out of the little vacation village of Grubvyn when we came across a pasture with some sheep. John and Stephen had talked about this over breakfast. They mentioned how a number of sheep were black. Stephen said that in the United Kingdom now children are taught to chant “Bah, bah, green sheep, have you any wool?” because the people at OFSTED, the national education agency, thought that the real words might be racist. Of course, there are no green sheep, and the wool from black lambs was prized as it did not need to be dyed. But what do biology and history matter when political correctness is at stake?

We came across some of the most achingly lovely scenery I have looked at in years. The pictures really do not do it justice.

And as I looked at it I had a strange insight into myself. I spend much of my waking moments feeling somewhere between vaguely irritated to seriously angry. I sometimes wonder if on my grave I should copy the epitaph of Jonathan Swift: “Hic depositum est corpus Ionathan Swift . . . Ubi sæva indignatio ulterius cor lacerare nequit.” “Here lies the body of Jonathan Swift . . . where savage indignation can rend his heart no more.” Yet here I was feeling extraordinarily peaceful. And it occurred to me that my feelings are a response to my situation, and that I can control that situation to some degree. I can leave my job with the school district. I can stop reading the newspaper constantly. I can detach from all the nonsense related to Church. Now I probably will not do any of those things, but it was strangely helpful to understanding that my feelings are not who I am. To put it in Thomistic terms, and I always like to put things when I can in the words of Saint Thomas, they relate to existence rather than essence. Anger is a potentiality, but so is peacefulness. I am not sure what I will do with this insight, but it helped me.

We came back to the village after riding about for a couple hours. We stopped by the the Utö museum. It was not much. In fact, it mostly seemed like a handicraft store with a few old pictures and some iron mining equipment on display. Still, we did find a couple interesting things like the general store mannequin

or this vintage travel poster.

We had a lovely lunch at the restaurant by the hotel. John book a picture of a painting somebody had mad of the hotel. It captures the feel of the place better than a photograph does. 

It was a stunningly perfect day, clear, sunny, and about seventy degrees with a gentle breeze. We a lovely, leisurely lunch. We watched as people came walked and cycled by. Pedal-powered carts are a popular family choice.

About fifteen minutes before the boat was scheduled to leave we went down to the village. I turned in my bike and took the Nordic Tracks one back. With its completely flat tire I rolled it over to the dock. We knew that we all had no time to waste when the ship came into port. Everybody rushed on board with their luggage first and only later returned to put their bikes on board. We have our priorities!

It was a beautiful ride back, but not a quick one.

Like me, Stephen stood on the stern and book pictures. 

That, by the way, is the most restrained of his cycling shirts! I also spent time trying to evade this crazy Swedish man who insisted on trying to talk to all of us. He went on and on to me in broken English about the “hippies.” I am not sure if he liked them or not. But he certainly liked to photobomb my picture of my friends from Manchester.

To get from the archipelago into Stockholm harbor requires navigating through some narrow channels.

I have no idea how cruise ships do it; perhaps there is some special channel that has been created for shipping. These are obviously some of the nicest areas of Stockholm. I suspect that while some of the houses were summer places originally, most now are suburban homes.

One of the things I have noticed in Sweden is that it is not the socialist society that most Americans think it is, whether they like that idea or not. There are definite social classes. Some people are wealthy and many other people are not. You see people begging on the streets. While there are many more immigrants than I expected to see here, they are the people who are driving cabs or bussing tables in restaurants. When we talked to some of those people, and the cab drivers were often somewhat chatty, they talked about how hard it is to make it in Sweden and how so many of them are forced to share a single flat. Sweden has high taxes, but it is a capitalist society. And I think that immigrants want to come there less for the social welfare benefits and more for the hope that they too, or more likely their children, may make it some day into that comfortable upper middle class that they see around them each day.

Carmen met us on the dock. And here we had a bit of a surprise. Australian John was met on the dock by a woman who looked to be about twenty years his junior. We all sensed that there was a relationship here. We asked Stephen, who roomed with John and knew the most about him, whether that was his “small f” or “capital F” friend. “Oh, the latter,” he slyly informed us. Aussie John does indeed have a lot of life in him at eighty five!

Carmen took us in the ran to the Rex Hotel. It is also part of the Hellsten hotel chain that rain the Queen Christina hunting lodge. Once again, rooms were clean but small and pretty basic. And here my serenity evaporated and “savage indignation” returned when I called AT&T to discuss how they had messed up my international plan. I had to deal with a twit named Kevin who made it abundantly clear that while they had indeed given me the wrong plan he was not about to try to fix anything except the blame on me. I absolutely exploded. John was so upset that he went off by himself for a walk for an hour while I calmed down.

I am sure tomorrow will be better. And I’ll deal with AT&T, probably by switching to Verizon and Spectrum, awful as they are too, when I return next week.

The day did not begin well. On our way up to the main hotel for our breakfast, I looked at my bike. The tire was clearly close to flat. Obviously the patch, though it had helped keep me riding for a while, was not enough. But John reminded me that we had seen a bike shop in the village and that they would probably be able to put a new tube in the tire. We had a nice breakfast. I am getting a little tired of scrambled eggs all the time, and I have never really warmed up to the idea of sliced meats and cheese for breakfast, so it was deeply satisfying to discover that the Swedes apparently like peanut butter, too. Of course, since there was bacon, too, I had to make myself one of my childhood favorites, a peanut butter and bacon sandwich. 

We went down to the bike shop when it opened. One of the men working there told us that technically they could not fix other bikes, but that one of the young guys who was not on his shift right now would fix it for 200 crowns. That seemed like a pretty fair price, and I readily agreed to it. He told us to come back in about a half hour. We wandered around the town and looked in the various shops. When we returned to the bike shop, we received some bad news. The tire on the bike was indeed a strange one, and they did not stock tubes for it. They could place a special order for it, but it would take a couple days to arrive from Stockholm. We explained that we were leaving tomorrow. I asked if they had bikes to rent. There was a large rack of basic three gear cruisers there. He handed me one. “No charge,” he cheerfully told us. 

We went back to the room, packed our things for a journey, and headed out. My new bike was not fancy, but fortunately this island was so flat that it was perfectly adequate.

One of our first stops was the windmill, possibly the island’s most famous attraction. 

The Utö windmill was built, as you might expect, by a Dutchman and it ground grain for the island for many decades. Set on one of the highest points of the island, there are some wonderful views of the archipelago.

John insists I have to include a couple pictures of me, too. But I prefer to include pictures of him. He is more handsome, anyhow.

We rode though lovely woods and by small farms. I probably should have taken some pictures of all of that, but I was having such a pleasant time riding that it did not occur to me. 

There is a second village on the island, older than the one where we are staying, and it is the place where most of the islanders live. We stopped by the church.

In this part of Sweden, the churches are generally open most of the day for strangers to step in and look around. Of course, stepping into the pulpit is probably not what they expect. But John is not shy.

The rest of the building was plain with a historic organ

and these globe-like candelabras that you find in Lutheran churches all over Scandinavia. 

There was a small historical display in a room off the narthex. One picture, dating from the late forties or early fifties, showed a visit from the bishop. 

Unlike “low church” American Lutherans, the Swedes love vestments!

As we headed north on the island, we saw signs, mostly in Swedish, but some in English, too, warning that we were entering an army firing range. It seemed weird to place something this dangerous on the most touristed island in the archipelago. It seemed even stranger that even the army goes on vacation in July and that visitors were welcome to wander around the firing range. They were warned, of course, that there might be some unexploded ordnance. That seemed like more of a risk than I wanted to take, so I was content to take pictures of tanks both current 

and out of commission.

We came to the end of the island, crossed a bridge, and what I guess is technically a second, separate island, Alö. There is a seafood restaurant at the end of this island. It looked good, but it was busy and we were not that hungry. Plus, we had brought along some snacks anyhow.

We had read that there was a beach not far from here and we rode there. I was quite surprised to find an actual sandy beach, even if it was not that large. 

Cycling is probably the most popular pastime on Utö, so we passed lots of other people on bicycles. But I could not resist pulling out my phone and taking this picture as I rode. 

That little dog was having a great time. 

And I did, too. For a day that had begun somewhat badly, it ended wonderfully. Along with my day on Dugi Otok in Croatia, this is my second favorite day of the entire trip, I think. 

Tomorrow we go home. Our adventures are coming to a close. What a great trip this has been.