Stockholm's old town, Gamla Stan, is largely on Stadsholmen island and located right in the city centre. It's small, compact and very walkable, at least in the summer when not shrouded in snow and ice that otherwise makes the cobbled streets treacherous in the winter months. (And yes, I speak from experience!)

The architecture is what you'd expect - solid, Germanic-style buildings, plain and with little adornment. Interestingly, that description also seems to apply well to the Royal Palace that's also located here. Compare what's here with, for example, what's to be found in cities like London, Paris and Vienna and you'll see what I mean!

Head down the main thoroughfare to the water and you'll find a frontage of old merchants' houses and maritime offices. During the Great Power Era, Stockholm became the centre of Sweden's push to become a major mercantile force in the region, leading to a period of prosperity and architectural development.

The shot above is of one of Gamla Stan's narrow cobbled streets glowing warm in the early evening summer sun.

Spring In Stockholm

Back now from Stockholm where, for at least one day, it was mild and sunny, both at the same time. At this time of year, it's quite possible to do a day in the office, grab something to eat and still find enough daylight to make walking around with a camera a worthwhile experience (sunset was around 10 am with dawn breaking a mere 6 hours later at 4 am.)

On a tangent, it's hard to figure out how to photograph a large church with a small camera and still get something interesting. Details can work, but it's rare you have a lens that can deliver sufficient reach to make that workable. Going wide is perfectly do-able, but often not very interesting.

Art is never easy!

Opening Doors

Masonic Door Handles, Stockholm

While in Stockholm I had a couple of hours free so I took off round the old town on Gamla Stan. Going past a large church (the name of which now completely escapes me) I found these masonic-motif handles.

They say being a member of the Masons helps open doors but I don't think this is quite what was meant ....

Spring in Sweden

Tree Shadow, Stockholm

Beautiful sunny weather this morning, so I walked to the office. It's about a 30 minute stroll from my hotel and certainly no hardship on a day such as this. The most direct route goes past what, to me at least, appears to be the Justice Ministry, inhabiting an appropriately large and imposing edifice! However, it's clad in a rather cheerful yellow stone that's quite at odds with what otherwise, given its massive and imposing proportions, could be a wonderfully Kafka-esque sort of place.

I guess that's modern socialism for you - the kindlier, gentler, yellower sort of political system!

Far-Away Phone Call

In addition to all the usual criteria - room size, comfort, nice bathrooms, quietness, heating/cooling controls etc. - I've now started to judge hotels by the quality and availability of their broadband services. Working in the room is always a given and, thanks largely to the usurious rates hotels charge for their phone calls, Skype has also now become an essential tool, especially if calling from overseas. I mention all this because the hotel I use in Stockholm - Radisson SAS by the train station - recently went from wired to wireless, which is good, but in the process screwed up both access and reliability a treat, which is very bad. I keep getting a duplicate IP address warning; signal strength is very variable depending on where your room is; it times-out overnight meaning you don't wake up with a nice fresh stack of messages ready to go; and they outsource the whole shooting match so are less than helpful if you call down to complain.

Everything else about the place is great, but not enough. This one issue now dominates what I need from a hotel and so I'll have to look elsewhere if this doesn't improve.

Up or Down?

Travelling is basically a destabilising activity, especially when 9 time zones & two climates are involved. Odd bouts of gloominess, sudden feelings of being too hot or too cold, stomach aches etc. are all part-and-parcel of long-haul flying and business trips. And that's before the lack of sleep, change in diet, general stress and everything else that all conspires together to make you ask the same question, at least three times a day, namely, "why am I doing this again?"

Even now, I look at that picture and have to reconstruct where I was, when, in order to answer the question of whether I was going up the escalator or down it. And it was only yesterday.