We woke up to a dreary drizzly day in Stockholm. While we did our best with the waterproofing we're now taking bets on whether the tent will survive the holiday. I've not liked it from day one; granted the central area is better for sitting in and the kids have a sleeping section each but our sleeping compartment is so cramped and the quality was questionable. It's now beginning to fall apart, and as our first night in it was in Wells this May it's only been slept in for 8 nights. But the webbing has come undone in one corner and is now being held together by a safety pin, and one of the seams on the dome is looking wafer thin and a good wind could rip us asunder. Vanessa nearly bought a new tent before we came away as Blacks had a £200 tent reduced to £75, but decided not as she knew my reaction would have been 'why do we need another bloody tent', she was right. But I'm looking forward to binning this one now and hoping it will at least last till the Baltic States instead of expensive Sweden.

Stockholm is built on 14 islands. We took the metro the 9 stops to Gamla Stan which is the old part of Stockholm (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamla_Stan) and built on a central island and mainly follows the medieval street plan with cobbled streets and narrow alleyways. The surrounding water was not the water we encoutered though as it had started raining again, but we donned waterproofs and wandered the streets.

Stockholm also has a palace where the Swedish royal family reside. We visited the Three Crowns museum which is in the brick vaults below the palace that date from medieval times and were used for storage of grains and dried foods. We also saw the changing of the guard.