Saturday, July 26, 2014

Skansen and Uto Island


The sun had been blazing and we were nearing the end of our time in Sweden.  With only two days before departing for Finland we decided to visit Skansen Open-Air Museum and the Uto Island, located in the archipelago. 

To get to Skansen we caught the ferry across the harbour, a lovely trip with fantastic views of Stockholm city.  Skansen was similar to a museum we visited in Denmark, but bigger and with Scandinavian animals.  There were people dressed in traditional dress or old farming clothes and working the farm.  We liked seeing the moose and reindeer, Corban liked calling out to the reindeer with the names of Santa’s reindeer.  There were traditional violin folk songs played and also a folk dancing performance.  The folk dancing was great to watch.  When we were leaving there was also a band playing music, it was funny listening to Abba songs in Sweden.

Our final day in Sweden was a visit to Uto Island.  We read great reviews on the internet and were recommended to go there by our home exchange family.  The boat ride took about one hour through a maze of islands and was very pretty, although the yucky water surprised us.  The island was small enough to walk around and we stopped at different swimming spots.  It made us very thankful that we come from NZ, the water was quite polluted there were even little dead fish floating around.  Later Allan did some research and we found out that the Baltic Sea is actually dying.  With 85 million people living around it and the water taking 20 years to change, it is in a bit of a bad state.  Such a shame, as it is such a beautiful place.         


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