Our Flickas Arrive! Stockholm

See the look on our faces?  It's just lovely to see our daughter and two oldest grand-daughters when they fly to Stockholm from Chicago!

Anne was brave to travel with E and M as Dad stayed behind with their youngest daughter, H.

Upon pickup from the airport, we drove to Stockholm to look for a parking garage.

As E is a reader, she noticed the P-Hus (parking garage) and we all had a good laugh!  Add to this that enter is infart and exit is utfart ...oh, my! We were all cracking up...jet lag made everything even that more hilarious.  

Once we calmed down, we walked to nearby Gamla Stan. This is the old part of Stockholm and it is so charming with cobblestone streets, cute shops and old buildings.

 The girls had heard so much about fika, and it was time to dive right in to this most charming of all Swedish customs!  This was a fika-to-end-all-fikas as we let the girls pick anything they wanted as well as hot cocoa for some and coffee for others.

There's still one more treat coming as well as all our beverages...too busy to take pictures!

Most satisfying.

By this time, we had enough adventuring for travel day.  We had booked a little AirBnb guest house
in nearby Tyreso.  It had two bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, bathroom and the most dangerous stairs I've ever seen!  But it was super cozy and cute.  Two deer outside must be part of the deal, too.

Some slept better than others overnight here. That jet lag thing stinks.

It's a new day and we are off to do more Stockholm adventures.
Our first destination is The Vasa Museum.
The Vasa was a wartime ship built in the 17th century that sunk in the waters by Stockholm on her maiden voyage in 1628. Extensive salvage efforts began after the Vasa's underwater discovery in the mid 1900's.  A permanent home for the Vasa opened in 1990 at the present site.

 The girls loved this museum!  
It helped to have a story/film about a pig stuck on the ship as it begins to sink:

 

The Vasa Piglet Film

One day a piglet called Lindbom leaves his beloved mud puddle and heads out on on a great adventure on board the warship Vasa. The film is based on the book "The Vasa Piglet" written by Björn Bergenholtz.

On the same island in Stockhom - Djurgarden - a "Children's Attraction" is to be found.
This is Junibacken. It is devoted to children's literature, but especially to Astrid Lindgren.
This is where we brought the girls next.

Upon entry, there is a cute play area.  Both girls had so much fun here in spite of the "Hamster Wheel" that rattled them!

From this Storybook Square, you end up by the Story Train that takes riders through landscapes found in various Astrid Lindgren books.

 

 We all fit in one car.

(And, no, this is not us.)

The end of the ride spits you out into Villa Villekulla - the home of Pippi Longstocking.
Do you see Anne and the girls on the top floor?

Here we see E and M on Little Old Man. (That will earn you trivia points because few know his name - Mr. Nilsson is a shoe-in for the name of her monkey.)

We lucked out here with a live-action Pippi play on the day of our visit.

Yes, of course, we had fika following all this fun.

Then we headed back to our cozy AirBnb for some journal writing.

Sleep is getting easier after full days such as these!

Stockholm has been a blast!

In the morning, we'll head back "home" to Jonkoping to continue more Sweden adventures.