After the Free Walking Tour of Gamla Stan

The Grand Hotel, viewed from Gamla Stan

After the free walking tour of Gamla Stan, I scurried back to my side of town for "Fika," the Swedish term for afternoon coffee break. Yes, of course I had a kardemommebullar.

I walked past this very communist looking memorial en route to my fika. 

I thought the guy in the middle looked vaguely like Joe Stalin. It's not. It's the Brantingmomumentet, The Branting Monument, a monument to Hjallmar Branting, the first Social Democrat prime minister of Sweden. He had three stretches as prime minister between 1920 and 1925. He is depicted addressing a crowd of workers at a May Day rally, a communist holiday, so it's no accident it looked vaguely communist.

Warmed up from the strongest cup of black coffee I've had in Stockholm so far -- the tour guide on the walking tour said Sweden is the world's second largest consumer of coffee per capita -- second only to Finland -- who apparently drinks an outrageously larger amount of coffee per capita -- 3.7 cups per day per every person in children including babies, tea drinkers, and Mormons compared to 3.2 cups a day for runner-up Sweden -- time to scurry back to Gamla Stan.

Destination: the Cathedral: Storkyrkan:

It's not a "real" cathedral, of course. It's Lutheran! It's not in communion with Rome. But it does have the original of the monumental sculpture of St. George slaying the Dragon who is totally symbolic of the then-hated Danes.

It is even more impressive than the outdoor bronze:

Here I am, looking like a tourist taking a selfie in front of the St. George slaying the Dragon statue/sculpture:

The cathedral is quite ornate for being Lutheran. Usually the Lutheran churches in northern Europe are quite spartan.

And it has a giant church bell down on the ground.

It has tombs, just not the actual royalty. They're buried in a different church in Gamla Stan.

The altar is quite ornate.

And this is the view of St. George and that Dragon as seen from standing at the altar.

Again, quite ornate for Protestantism. I don't want to get into a theology discussion about the merits of various churches, but you have to admit the Catholic churches are consistently more beautiful and ornate than their Protestant kin. I think it was one of the beefs the early Protestants had with Roman Catholicism.

The last stop of the Gamla Stan portion of the day was the Nobel Prize Museum. It was quite small.

One of the highlights of the museum are the banners depicting a hundred-plus years of Nobel laureates, being whisked through the one-floor museum, looking like championship banners in a sports arena. Which, in a way, they are.

The museum is bigger on video screens than it is on memorabilia. Here is a video display that is two touches from the main screen, describing the massive scandal over awarding the first Nobel Prize to now-forgotten French poet Sully Prudhomme over the great and still-relevant Leo Tolstoy. Kind of a whiff on the part of the Nobel selection committee right out of the box. 

Here is the display on Calvin Coolidge's Vice President Charles Gates Dawes, winner of the 1925 Nobel Peace Prize.

Believe it or not, he did not win for writing the classic pop song "It's All in the Game". It was for the "Dawes Plan," a U.S.-funded effort to revive the moribund German economy post-WWI before something catastrophic happened. (Spoiler alert: it was too late.)

Then there is the display for all the Nobel laureates in physics in the decade of the 1920's.

Every one a giant then and still a giant today. Einstein won in 1921. Weirdly enough, it was NOT for the theory of relativity. It was too "out there" for way back then. It's still kind of "out there" today. Einstein won for this theory on the photo-electric effect.

The number of Nobel laureates over the years is huge. So huge that not all the banners can circulate at the same time. Most of them are parked on the ceiling, waiting to be whisked about the room, stacked up like planes over Lake Mead waiting to land at McCarran.

And here is Mr. Nobel himself, in medal form (metal too), on the floor of his prize's museum.

The afternoon had gotten sunny on the Stortorget outside the museum. Again: oldest square in Stockholm.

I think this is a water fountain.

By this time of day, the crowds were long gone from the ceremony at the Royal Palace.

Only a lone guard left.

Time to head back to Norrmalm for some supper.

And where for supper? Why there's a Jensen's Bøfhus just a block from my hotel!

Jensen's Bøfhus is a Danish "casual dining" steakhouse chain. Think: Outback of Denmark. I was given massive quantities of grief by friends in Denmark when I ate at one my first night in Copenhagen several years ago. And now I get to eat at one in Stockholm.

I had the pork tenderloin. The meat was very good: flavorful and tender. The potatoes were so-so. I washed it down with a Danish beer, Carlsberg on tap.

And that ends my first full day in Stockholm.