So far we’ve not really been doing the museum thing on this trip. We’re not sure why. But today we broke the spell and visited the Millesgården. It is the home and grounds of Carl Milles, one of Sweden’s most famous and prolific sculptors. He died in 1955 but not before bequeathing his property and sculptures to the people of Sweden. You can see some of his work on the Smugmug site.

We spent a lot of time here. They have a gallery for presenting modern works and we really enjoyed the works of Björn Wessmans. He’s a bit of a modern impressionist and his work is very colorful.

We spent the most time walking the grounds. There are tons of pieces on display including sculpture of course but also ponds, reflecting pools and even architecture. The house is quite large and packed full of art and sculpture that Milles collected in his lifetime.

One of the very curious things about the museum is that you need a code to LEAVE the restaurant. You can get in, but unless you paid to see the museum, you can’t get out!

The museum is in a wealthy suburb of Stockholm. Yesterday we learned the T-bana (subway) system; today we learned the bus system. It was fun, and in fact, we out-smarted some natives. Two busses arrived at once and they all went for bus 203. But we were smart and got on 207. A few moments later they schlepped off 203 and joined us on 207.

Some observations and notes about Stockholm and Sweden:

The day is damn long here. Today sunrise was at 3:41am and sunset was at 10:05pm. It’s likely we will never use our headlights on this trip. It fools you too; when you leave dinner around 9pm or so, see next item, you think it’s earlier in the evening than it really is.

It takes freaking forever to have dinner in a Stockholm restaurant. You can wait ten minutes to get a menu, twenty minute to order, thirty more minutes to get your food, another thirty or so for them to come for the empty plates and then another ten or twenty minutes to get the check. We’ve been paying with cash, so at least we don’t have to wait for the credit card machine!

Public transportation in Stockholm is very modern. Electronic signs at the stations tell you when your train or bus will arrive. Inside the train or bus, you get notices about the stops that are coming up. And everything runs to the minute. We parked the car when we got here and haven’t used it since. Hope it’s there tomorrow!

Tomorrow we head for Oslo. It will be a fairly long drive. Not as many kilometers as Copenhagen to Stockholm, but almost as many hours.