Found our hotel okay, dropped off our luggage (too early to check in), and headed for a boat tour of town. Interesting walk through town—old buildings and squares. The boat tour was excellent! (What we wanted in Stockholm, and didn’t get.) We were on a canal boat with a live narrator, who did the whole tour in English because everyone was comfortable with that. There were many very low bridges. We also went out into the harbor and saw the shipyards that flourished after WWII and have since all closed (the last one in 2014). She told us some about the history of the city and showed us some of the remaining walls of the city. The boat was open air so pictures were possible, and the motor was quiet so we could hear the guide.
After the tour, we got lunch at a Spanish restaurant nearby, then decided to walk back toward the hotel through a canal-side park. But, what was this? Police closing a street? What is happening? A festival, a parade, a “pride parade.” We have just attended our first gay pride parade. There were a lot of people lining the streets to watch, so we joined them. People marched past us for 30 minutes—a lot of people, many waving rainbow flags, some dressed to shock, most pretty ordinary. So we went to sit down for a while, when we realized the parade was not over—there was just a gap.
(to be continued)
