Christmas Vacation 2023

Wow.  It's come and gone like a flash.  Our annual Christmas-New Year trip to visit our kids is always a major logistical exercise, with lots of planning, coordinating, pre-mailing of packages, pet care, and the like.  But we pulled it off again this year, and really enjoyed the result.

We are camped in Pembroke Pines, Florida, where the RV will not freeze while we are gone for several weeks.  We moved down here from the Philly area right after spending a long Thanksgiving holiday with our daughter in Philly.  We helped a little in getting her tree set up, and a beauty it was:

Once we moved down to Florida, our thoughts turned to our holiday visit to Lithuania.  Our grandson did his part to assist in the planning by making a list of "Things To Do" during our 11 day stay in Vilnius.  It was an ambitious plan, but our grandson is always optimistic and full of plans:

Long plane flights -- especially red-eye flights -- take their toll on us, so we've adopted the strategy of shorter hops with multi-day layovers to allow us to recuperate between legs of the trip and explore a new city in the process.  In 2022, we stopped over in Copenhagen.  This year, we chose Stockholm with its city spread across many islands, its old town ("Gamla Stan") and its Christmas market in the main old square, Stortoget:

While the Christmas market was interesting, it was much smaller and less diverse in its offerings than the Christmas markets in Copenhagen and -- to our pleasant surprise when we were visiting in Lithuania -- much smaller and less diverse than the Christmas market in Vilnius:

We did our "Lonely Planet" and "Atlas Obscura" research before the trip, and learned that an ancient runestone is built into the wall of a building in Gamla Stan near Stortoget:

Known as the "Uppland Runic Inscription 53," according to Wikipedia, it first appears in historical records in the 17th century when Johannes Bureus (1568-1652) wrote down parts of its message. It is one of three runestones found in the old town. About half a metre tall and richly decorated with an arabesque of winding loops, the body of the dragon still carries fragments of the commemorative message: "Torsten and Frögunn had the stone erected after their son...."  The name of the son remains unknown. An interesting detail of the inscription is the cross-shaped engraving on center right, probably added to the stone after its completion to underline its Christian message.

Our long walks around Old Town also revealed a large number of ancient, cobblestoned streets, alleys and ways, including some with tunnels --

-- and Mårten Trotzigs gränd (in Swedish, "Alley of Mårten Trotzig").  It is known as the narrowest street in Stockholm: the width of its 37 steps tapers down to only 35 inches.  The alley is named after the merchant and burgher Mårten Trotzig (1559–1617), who, born in Wittenberg, immigrated to Stockholm in 1581, and bought properties in the alley in 1597 and 1599, also opening a shop there. According to sources from the late-16th century, he dealt in iron and later copper, by 1595, had sworn his burgher oath, and was later to become one of the richest merchants in Stockholm. He was however beaten to death during a trip to Kopparberg in 1617.

The food in Stockholm was a major highlight, second only to the old architecture and history of Gamla Stan.  Our first night, we enjoyed a traditional Swedish Julbord (Yule smorgasbord) at the restaurant Tre Valv.  Other diners were kind enough to take our photo --

-- but we made sure to take our own photo of the rich yuletide spread!

Aside from eating breakfast, lunch, fika (afternoon snack) and dinner, we spent all the rest of our time walking around Stockholm, which is eminently walkable.  We easily covered 5 or 6 miles a day.  One attraction on these walks was Västerlånggatan ("the Western Long Street"), which stretches nearly the length of Gamla Stan and features old shops, curious shops (such as the Science Fiction Bookstore!) and tourist shops, vendors selling the mulled wine Glögg, donut makers, and kaffee (coffee) shops.  Clearly, the attraction the old shopping street has had for tourists seemed to inspire an extension of the street, north of Gamla Stan, past the huge and impressive old Riksdag (Legislature) complex, into the island neighborhood of Rosenbad, where the street name changes to Drottninggatan and features very upscale shopping and department stores for those with more expensive tastes.  Along Drottninggatan, bollards declare the street off-limits to vehicles.  Some of the bollards are sculptures of lions, and some of the lion sculptures are whimsical enough to have pretty pink tongues:

Also situated north of Gamla Stan, just across a bridge, is the famous Kungsträdgården (Swedish for "King's Garden"), a pretty park which, as the name suggests, had originally been the King's garden.  At the north end of the bridge, the city has built a platform which is filled with corn and other grains for waterfowl to feast upon.  It was truly amazing to see the variety and number of birds gathering for their own little Julbord.  If you notice, there was a clear pecking order depending on size and nimbleness:

Kungsträdgården itself features a public ice skating rink, and a beautiful Yule tree, decorated appropriately for the season:

Many museums in Stockholm are closed on Mondays, and so, on our second day, a Monday, we were limited in our choice of museums.  We chose the Vasa Museum.  Located northeast but within walking distance of Gamla Stan on the island of Djurgården, the museum displays the only almost fully intact 17th-century ship that has ever been salvaged, the 64-gun royal warship Vasa that sank in Stockholm harbor, without really getting under sail, on her maiden voyage in 1628. It is said that the ship was poorly designed, being too narrow and with too high a center of gravity, with not enough ballast.  The Vasa Museum opened in 1990 and, according to the official website, is the most visited museum in Scandinavia.

The model shown below shows the ship in its original (brief but colorful) glory:

The restoration of the original is absolutely breathtaking.  Over 95% of the original ship was recovered, restored and pieced back together using original craftsmanship:

The rear of the ship, which housed the royal quarters, was elaborately carved and the open windows allowed a glimpse into the spacious rooms that would have been occupied by the King and his entourage:

Many of the sculptures were fantastical or represented historical or mythical persons and creatures.  These reproductions of two mer-people show how colorfully the original carvings and statuary were decorated:

Walking all over Stockholm works up a hearty appetite, so on our second evening, we booked a traditional Viking feast at Aifur restaurant.  It was NOT disappointing!

On arrival, we were announced to the assembled diners with a blast on a traditional Viking horn and some cheeky personal information gleaned about us:

During the entire meal, we were serenaded with old Viking music (and some more modern melodies) by this multi-talented musician:

But, as interesting as Stockholm was, it was but a prelude to our big visit to Vilnius, Lithuania to visit our grandson and his parents.  One item not on our grandson's action list -- but one that was very important to him -- was to show us the Shetland ponies stabled about half a mile from their house.  Our grandson joked that they looked like giant capybara, so we called our hikes over to look for them as the "Hunt for the Elusive Capybara."  Unfortunately, every time we marched over to the small corral and stable, we saw nothing but snow and an empty corral and stable:

Our son and grandson and daughter-in-law were well prepared for our arrival, with a fully decorate tree and "A Charlie Brown Christmas" playing on the television:

We were lucky because there was a giant snowfall early in our visit.  It gave us a chance to have some raucous fun in the snow --

-- for some of us to go sledding while others cheered --

-- and to build a real igloo in the front yard of their house!

Inside was warm and cozy --

-- and occasionally crazy:

One evening, all of us drove downtown to visit the Vilnius Christmas Market, complete with giant decorated tree --

-- and climb Tower Hill to see the old fort that overlooks Old Town Vilnius:

In this family, no visit with our daughter-in-law is complete without a family project to make traditional Chinese jiaozi (dumplings).  Here, the Jiaozi Crew is hard at work and fully concentrating on their dumpling shaping technique:

For his part, our son was the Founder of the Feast, assembling the most scrumptious Christmas dinner we could imagine!

These few photos can't do justice to the hijinx that ensued, but you can be sure we filled every waking minute with laughter, games and pranks.

All too soon, we had to leave.  We flew out of Vilnius on December 30, getting one overnight back in Stockholm.  By December 30, the Christmas Village had been taken down in Stortoget, but this also allowed us to take a photo of the classic, colorful buildings surrounding the square:

The Riksdag was lit up and quite impressive, looking north toward the new shopping street:

Having sampled traditional Swedish fare on our earlier visit, we found a genuine Chinese hotpot restaurant, Happy Lamb Hot Pot, right near our hotel.  After another 6 hours of strolling about town, we tucked into one of our favorite Chinese meals:

Heading back to the hotel, we passed the famous department store, NK, which offered beautiful holiday scenes in its sidewalk windows:

We strolled past a large open, below-ground shopping mall on the street, known as Sergels torg ("Sergel's Square").  It is one of the largest public squares in Stockholm, constructed in the 1960s and named after 18th-century sculptor Johan Tobias Sergel, whose workshop was once located north of the square.   The view in the square is dominated by a huge, 37 meter red-lit glass obelisk titled "Kristall-vertikal accent i glas och stål" ("Crystal-vertical accent in glass and steel"), designed by Edvin Öhrström in 1962 and completed in 1974.

Despite some hiccups with our plane's equipment which caused a 2 hour delay, we returned to Miami in time to celebrate New Year's 2024 -- and to be greeted by a message that our grandson and son had walked over and FOUND the Elusive Capybara.  Photographic proof is presented below:

HAPPY NEW YEAR, ONE AND ALL!