Packed for the excursion. Caught the bus on the pier, which took us and our guide, Eva, outside of Stockholm proper to Drottningholm Palace, an actual in-use residence of the royal family. Our guide gave us a lot of information, some of which we'd heard already, and again emphasizing that Sweden was politically neutral and hadn't had a war in 200 years. To me, it sounded like they were trying to make up for the fact that they had been warring with their neighbors for the previous thousand years, and hadn't quite completed their penance.

Drottningholm is a picturesque place, a warm yellow exterior looking out over a small lake, with expansive gardens behind. Because it's an actual residence, no picture taking is allowed once inside. Eva was somewhat miffed that her group had to wait for the next group to clear the room before proceeding, and had words with several of the palace guides as we made our way through the unoccupied wing. The palace had many similarities to Amelienborg and the Russian palaces, but seemed either older or less well maintained: faded or peeling paint, worn surfaces, dim and dusty rooms. It was not as ornate as the Russian palaces, nor as architecturally clean as the Danish one. We traipsed through about a dozen or more rooms, most with large paintings or tapestries, while Eva gave us a history of the Swedish royal family starting with Queen Hedwig Leonora and proceeding to the current Bernadot dynasty (which is actually French).

A uniformed sentry makes the rounds along the fence as we approach the palace from the right rear.

The palace is flanked on either side by a rotunda. We passed by the north rotunda as we made our way around to the front.

Our tour takes us along the front walkway, between the palace and the water.

Broad steps lead up to the main entrance. Our tour was limited to those rooms to the right of the entryway.

We exited the way we came in, through the front entrance, but did not have sufficient time to tour the baroque or English gardens in the back. She said it was due to the one-group-at-a-time policy, and her lengthy commentary hddn't helped, although it seemed to us that the time allocated for the excursion was simply inadequate for the itinerary. Jill bypassed the restroom stop to walk around to the back of the palace for a few pictures in the little time remaining, whereas Mark and Lauri focused on the front. (We learned later that what looks like an artificial lake is actually a notch cut into the shoreline of an inter-island channel.) It started raining as we boarded the buses, and rained for a while. By the time we were back in Stockholm, however, the skies had cleared somewhat and the rain had stopped.

The rear of the palace looks out over a broad gravel parade ground. Below and to the right of that lie the gardens.

The ornately-decorated gate leads to the palace's extensive gardens, which were not part of our tour.

A sentry in the front of the palace looks out over the channel, which we first thought to be a small lake.

Drottningholm Palace looks out over the water on a grey and somber day.

Another view of the palace shows it framed by the trees that run along the esplanade.

Time for lunch when we returned to the ship. From our window seat in the Lido we watched as they unloaded containers from the freighter that had docked behind the Rotterdam to our port, which set us to wondering how we were going to get out. No sail-away party was listed on the day's program, so we decided to watch from the veranda. Discovered that sometime during the day, without us noticing, the Costa ship had left, so we simply backed out and rotated counter-clockwise. Also leaving at the same time were the Silja Symphony and one of the Tallink ferries, Isabelle, but they were "upstream" of the exit course, so we were first in line. The ship sailed slowly past myriad islands in the archipelago, in sizes ranging from large tabletop to small county, all wooded, and a surprising number of them sprinkled with colorful wooden houses, despite the lack of roads and bridges. Not surprising was the sheer number of small boats that dotted the shorelines, nor the plethora of small ferries that tracked back and forth across the big ships' path. The Isabelle took a hard right at one point, but the Symphony stayed with us into open water. The afternoon varied between partly cloudy and partly sunny. We didn't see any more rain, but cloud cover spoiled some of the pictures we wanted of the archipelago.

Myriad small islands dotted the channel as we sailed out of Stockholm, most (like this one) sporting trees that seem to sprout from bare rock.

We showered and changed, and grabbed our Soviet-era fur hats that we'd picked up in St. Petersburg, and found the photographer's corner. Their backdrop alternates between all white and greenscreen; today it was white. The photographer said it wouldn't wash out Jill's white hat, so we had fun posing for a few pictures, most of them silly. Several passengers and crew looked at us with skepticism or puzzlement as they passed by. Jill took the hats back to the stateroom while Lauri and Mark headed to the Pinnacle Bar. Everyone was in the mood for champagne, so Mark decided to retrieve the free bottle from the room and exchange it for a cold one at the bar. On his way, he passed a couple at the photographer's corner asking for "picture with Russian hat." We may have started something! The poor photographer had to explain that they didn't have those as props; we had brought our own. We finished off the bottle in time for dinner. Bill and Karen apparently went to the Cannaletto, but we had a good time with Harry, Jane, and Marie. Mark and Jill took a walk around the ship after dinner; Lauri spent the rest of the evening in the casino.

In one of our infamous "Russian Hat" pictures, we attempted to adopt a Soviet-era grumpiness, but it was all Lauri and Jill could do to keep from laughing.