The next morning, we woke up from our lovely hostel room with very sore throats. We thought (because it was the both of us) that it was some sort of allergic reaction to something.
So we high-tailed it out of there and headed out toward Skokloster - a wonderfully preserved Baroque castle. On the way were a couple of runes. I went to check them out (Alyssa was feeling miserable and tired). To to get the one, I parked the car near a horse farm and walked through the forest path. After taking some pictures, I returned to find Alyssa feeding the horses clover.
We went to Skokloster, which was beyond description. The castle was built by Carl Gustav Wrangel in the mid 1600's, basically as a monument to show off how powerful and wealthy he was from his military and political career. He never lived there more than 30 days and the thing was basically a museum from when it was built. Due to his request and more so the will of his daughter, the castle and all of things in it were to be passed as a single object and no artifact may be removed from the castle. As such it is preserved beautifully in rare 17th Century form.
In the afternoon, we went to Sigtuna, the oldest town in Sweden. It was cute, and we walked around amidst the little winding rows. We also walked through the ruins of St. Olaf's church. Afterwards, we stopped in the other church there (I believe it was of St. Mary) and looked around. We talked with a very, very bored college student who was working there, answering questions about the church.
By the time we got back to the Normans, we were quite sick indeed.
Skokloster Slott & Sigtuna
July 4, 2007
