Day 9: Stockholm - City Hall & Ikea

The breakfast spread at Queen's Hotel was quite good - except that it only has one warm dish, which is scrambled eggs. Other than that, everything else was satisfactory. There didn't seem to be too many guests at the hotel. Perhaps it's because it was already the second-half of August, and most Scandinavians are already back at work.

I spent the morning at the City Hall. This is where the annual Nobel Prizes are awarded and where the Nobel Banquet is held at the Blue Hall. I was quite looking forward to the visit, to pretend that I have actually won the prize and walked down the famous staircase as a proud new laureate. :D Okay, don't laugh. Day-dreaming is perfectly healthy ;) 

Some photos I took enroute to City Hall:

Unfortunately, you can only join a guided tour and the first tour doesn't begin till 9.30am. I was a tad too early at 9am, so I had a walkabouts around the building. I was back again at 9.15am, and already there were three other huge tour groups from China swarming the ticketing area. I glanced at the guided tour time-table but there were no tours scheduled in Chinese until much later in the afternoon. Just as I was wondering about this, a Swedish lady guide appeared suddenly and she started addressing the group in perfect Mandarin! I was impressed! And that solved my puzzle. I always knew Europeans are very good at languages, and most can speak a multitude of languages. They must surely be the most linguistically-inclined people on Earth.

The tour did not disappoint. Our guide was a young lady who knew her subject matter thoroughly. Our tour started at the Banquet Hall that sits 1,300 guests every year. I thought this was an amazing feat - given that the Hall was maybe at most the size of a football field. It is officially called the Blue Hall, but there's nothing blue in here. Apparently, the architect wanted blue tiles but changed his mind later on. However, the name got stuck and it has been called Blue Hall ever since. We were told that the Laureates would walk down the staircase and while walking down, they have to focus on a star on the wall. This is so that they will look their very best in the photographs - heads held up, distinguished, dignified, and intelligence, all at once. Apparently, the architect also had ladies in high-heels in mind: the staircase steps' width and height were measured and designed so that ladies in high-heels need to worry at all about tripping. How thoughtful and interesting! 

The City Hall is also home to the Municipal Council and there are 200 offices and conference rooms in the same building as well. The "Radsalen" room (Council Chambers) is where all the most important government meetings are held and decisions that affect Sweden are made here. There are now 101 seats - 49 men, 52 women. The architect designed the ceilings in old Swedish style - wooden shafts to create a space for smoke to escape out of the buildings. He had other ideas in mind as well. He had the ceilings painted in blue to represent the skies, and stars, moon, and sun were painted on them. I missed the meaning and significance of this unfortunately.

We were next brought to the dining area, a holding room of sorts for the Laureates to mingle and network before the banquet. The windows on one side of the room were each graced with carvings of a man and a woman, while the other side of the long room were painted to reflect the exact reflection of the scenery outside the windows. The pillars in this room also came in pairs - one pillar is round while the other is octagonal. It was said that the round pillar represented Woman while the octagonal pillar represented Man (because it is more 'rough', more 'edgy').

The tour ended at the Golden room. And this time, the room is literally gold. It is filled with 18 million gold mosaic tiles! On one side of the wall, we could see that there were some 'mis-calculation' (or mis-measurement) of the height of the wall. At the top of the wall, the head of one of the saints was missing. Apparently, the architect or designer explained it away that the Saint was beheaded (which is a fact). The Golden Hall is dominated by a woman. I thought she didn't look too good, but there's definitely character and she is unique. You won't forget her once you have seen her.

The City Hall Tower is 106 meters high. We were told that when the architect was designing the City Hall, he had travelled to Copenhagen to check out their City Hall. He found out their City Hall was 105 meters in height. And so ..... :)

After the very good and informative tour of the City Hall, I crossed the bridge and headed to Riddarholmen. This is a small islet that is part of Gamla Stan (Old Town). Unfortunately, the Riddarholmen Church was closed that day. 

I went back to the Central Train Station to catch the free shuttle bus to Ikea at Kungens Kurva - the largest Ikea in the world. I'm not exactly a die-hard fan, but given the popularity of Ikea back home, this was an interesting visit nevertheless! The bus ride took about 20 minutes, and I had meatballs for lunch. I did some window shopping after before taking the free shuttle bus back to the city. However, the bus broke down halfway but thankfully, we did not have to wait long for the next one. 

After Ikea, I had some time to visit the Nobel Museum, which was sadly totally not worth the visit. I didn't get the sense that it was well put together and I left the Museum none the wiser on the impact or meaning of the prize against the backdrop of different eras. Frankly, if I wanted to learn and know all the Laureates over the years, I could easily do this on the internet. I spent the rest of the afternoon ambling aimlessly around Gamla Stan before calling it quits for the day.