Walked to across from the City Hall for our boat ride to Drottningholm Palace. Pat bought our combo tickets (boat ride plus entrance to all of the Drottningholm places) online last night. We just have to show the email recipe to each of the places we enter; the boat, the palace, the theater, and the Chinese pavilion.
The boat ride over to the island where the palace is takes one hour and it's a beautiful sunny day (can you believe it?), so we sit on top in the open air. Karen is writing up yesterday's journal and we both are taking pictures, but we are crammed in here on this boat and we make three more stops to pick up more people and there are people standing with no seats left.
We arrive and go to the Palace to get signed up on the noon English tour. That accomplished, we start touring around through all the palace rooms, thinking it would be better to take pictures now, rather than try with a large tour group. That was a great decision, because the first thing our guide said to us was please do not take photos during the tour!? You want me to come back to take my photos? Strange.
The Palace was built for a queen around 1580, but burnt to the ground as most castles do. The present castle was completed in 1672. We learned about the two queens who ruled here. Their names do not matter.
Bed Chambers are always impressive.
This Palace is STILL used by the current King and Queen so it is kept nice looking.
This was out the back door. I'm sure he pays his gardener well.
We had lunch in the cafe here. It's Swedish National Day and when I saw Swedish Meatballs on the menu that was it. Time to celebrate in my small way. Pat had the minute steak and I enjoyed my meatballs.
After lunch we toured the theater. King Gustav III was a great lover of the theater. He even wrote and starred in plays here. He is the one who had this theater built and it is amazing. I remember when the 5th Avenue Theater put in the revolving turntable. They were so proud of it. Well this theater was built in 1667 and the things it can do are pretty cool.
They had 42 men, Dutch and German sailors, working all the ropes to make everything happen on stage. Scene changes took only 4 seconds. Background rolled down, and at least six side panels on each side were changed. Things or people or animals were raised up on stage or lowered off stage. The amount of ropes and pulleys to make it all work is why they wanted sailors to work it. They understood ropes and pulleys.
We walked through the massive gardens on our way back to tour the Chinese Pavilion.
It was built as a birthday present for the queen. The Chinese influence was very popular at this time. It's a round building, with curved wings, mainly used in the summer for daytime activities. They had performances just outside the doors in the courtyard. In a separate building here, the King had a turning room. Men did wood working while women embroidered for relaxation.
The last building here was for the King and Queen. They could go there when they wanted privacy. Even the servants could not see them here. The servants would set the table, dishes, food, everything. Then the King would ring a bell and the servants would raise the table full of food right up to them from below the floor.
Walked back towards the dock through the park. It's a huge park and always open. Lots of open fields of grass and trees. It's very busy in the park today because it's sunny all day and it's National Day.
We saw a school band take their picture, but didn't hear them play. We did see a musical group and an opera singer perform inside next to the theater. They were in costumes from the 1600's and she sang opera from that time frame.
We are finished and have 30 minutes before we need to be at the dock for our ride back, so we grab a table and a Diet Coke before queuing up for our hour long boat ride.
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