On a spring roll

We’ve had April weather since March. Yesterday it was snowing big wet flakes all day, but when we got up this morning the sun shone from a bright blue sky and we decided to make use of our Skansen cards.

It was still rather chilly outdoors, but as long as one kept to the sunny side of the street, it was OK. After all the fuss about getting the tram to Sergels torg last summer, Hamngatan was closed off for street works until May, so we had to go the old end stop at Norrmalmstorg.

At Skansen we got into the VIP lane ready to nonchalantly breeze in, waving our cards, but were pushed aside by a huge group of American tourists, and then a Spanish couple who inquired about lots of things at the till, but finally we could pass the gate. By now we were pretty hungry, so we started with lunch at Gubbhyllan. Even so, when we then got up to the town quarters, the smells of freshly-baked bread that wafted out of the bakery almost floored us. As we peeked into the yards we found the saddler’s workshop, where the friendly saddler showed us some original 16th Century saddles and cleverly-shaped replica leather snuffboxes he’d just finished. We continued round some other shops and then went up to the Easter market. Perhaps we should have skipped the indoors lunch in favour of outdoors eating in the sun, but that will have to be for some other time. We still bought some bread and jam to take home and then continued to the newly-renovated petting zoo. Like our bag, this was also jam-packed, but at least we managed to look at the pigs and goats for a while.

Eventually we continued to Aquaria to look at fish. The crawlspace through the big aquarium with the sharks and moray had been closed up for some reason, which also shut off much of the view of the tank, which was a pity. In one of the smaller aquaria I watched a little fish rest on a leaf that gently swayed in the current, I have to presume it found this enjoyable.

Finally we boarded the ferry to Slussen and then home.