Living in London

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It's 8:30 pm and darkness will descend in an hour or so. The captain explained that we must be out of the archipelago before dark, and so we left the Stockholm pier 30 minutes earlier than scheduled.

We write this from the 11th floor observation deck, Brandy Alexanders in hand, as the Seven Seas Voyager winds its way out of the Swedish archipelago, past rocky promenades and every size and shape of island covered with dense fir forests.

Since 3:30 pm we have checked in (one glass of sparkling wine), unpacked, then done a safety drill involving our life jackets and assembling on the deck under the life boats (could have, should have brought a glass of champagne), then a reception on the main deck (two more glasses of champagne), then a lecture on St. Petersburg and the history of Russia (one glass of champagne), and now we are up on the observation deck where we are in complete agreement that we could sit for the entire trip.

The ship is quiet but you can feel the engines humming under your feet, and it's a very powerful experience to see the islands melt away on either side.

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Today we segway'd, taxi'd, and cruise'd. We started the day with a Segway tour of Djurgarden, a beautiful garden island that is part of Stockholm. We rode past all kinds of beautiful flowers and vegetable gardens, all set in a gorgeous park. As I would have predicted, Heather is trying to figure out where we should live in order to justify owning one.

Then we set off to the National Museum, which turned out to be fantastic ... They had a very good design exhibition, and some genius curator has finally put 18th century paintings with modern in the same gallery. Heather was reminded of the etiquette of museums.

Then we did some fun people-watching as the city readied itself for it's Gay Pride parade. We longed to stick around to see the parade, but hey, we had a ship to catch. We wound all around the parade route in a taxi en route to the piers to begin our cruise. 

We loved Stockholm and hope we can return to this lovely little city soon. However, now that the day is here, we are both amazed at how excited we are to board this very impressive ship.