Stockholm; Sunday, 05 June, 2005

After checking out of the hotel and dropping my bags of in the left luggage lockers at Stockholm Central Station, I headed back down to the palace to use up the remainder of my hop-on-hop-off boat ticket for the remainder of the circuit. After that I got on the open-top bus to go out to the town hall to catch the boat tour of the historic canals which was included free with the Stockholm card.

This tour again lasts about an hour, but runs round the canal that separates the 2nd largest island Kungsholmen from the other islands.

After that I went next door to the town hall and went up the tower for the stunning views over the city.

After descending the tower I went into the main entrance of the town hall to join one of the hourly guided tours that take you round some of the more important rooms of the building. The tour includes the blue room, where the banquet to honour the Noble prize winners is held every year, and the gold room with its spectacular mosaic decoration of some 19,000,000 individual tiles.

By the time I completed the tour there was just time to do a spot of souvenir shopping before heading back to the central station to pick up my luggage, and get the train back to the airport.