''I'm glad to hear you're having such a good time - but you don't need to tell me what a beautiful city it is, otherwise I wouldn't be forking out another 200 quid to go back in a few days!'' - Eilidh Fletcher

Eilidh had written me those words in response to an e-mail message I'd sent her from an internet café in Old Stockholm. She was in Scotland at the time writing an exam, and I'd sent her an e-mail to thank her for letting me stay in her apartment during my time in Stockholm. Eilidh's one of the ghr-reat Scots I met while in the Lofoten Islands during Arctic Week, and she was still on exchange here in Sweden. Unfortunately, our timing was perfectly backwards, and our paths didn't cross this time around. Nor did I see Tamsin and Shannon, who arrived the night after I left for Copenhagen. But what I did see of Stockholm was enough to make me consider it my favourite of all the capital cities I visited.

Let's start by taking a walk from that café into Gamla Stan, or, as they call it, Old Stockholm.

The atmosphere at Gamla Stan is not at all like that along Oslo's Carl Johan's Gate, which reminded me of Ottawa's Market Street. The cobblestone streets of Old Stockholm are winding and mazeline. They are lined with long, connected buildings decorated with pastels and soft-coloured paint.

Parts of Old Stockholm are touristy, but all I had to do was put down the map and ''deliberately'' try to get lost, and I found my way into the real Old Stockholm. Two hundred years ago, the well-to-do would walk and ride horses over these cobblestone streets to shop and eat in luxury.

This was Oxford, but with the English touch replaced with a thick and vibrant coat of Scandinavia. Make that Sweden, not Scandinavia - I found it was a mistake to say I'd been in Norway for three months prior to my arrival. Most Swedes snarled, and seemingly bit their tongues to hold back the words, ''I'm sorry to hear that!''

I think the tone of the Norwegian-Swedish rivalry is a bit darker on this side of the border. Or perhaps it's the city persona of the ''oh-eights,'' or Stockholm residents. (08 is the phone exchange for all of the city). I was accosted by a Swedish gentleman named Stephan who told me a lot about the city. According to Stephan, many Swedes outside of Stockholm feel similarly to many Canadians outside of Ontario - that the clustered many are being spoiled at the expense of the widespread few.

Stockholm does have its equivalent of Carl Johan's Gate. Walking streets like this one exist just outside of the Old Stockholm section of the city. At first, I mistook this section of town for Old Stockholm.

The old and the new mix freely here. This is near Gröna Lunds Tivoli, an amusement park based on Tivoli, a similar but larger park in Copenhagen.

On my first morning in Stockholm, I travelled 18 kilometers an hour up the 155 meters of the Kaknästornet, the tower off in the distance in this photo. The Kaknästornet is a radio broadcast tower that also provides the curious with an overview of the city.

The panoramic view from the top was remarkable. However, unlike the panoramas behind Oslø, Bodø and Tromsø, it included no mountains! Catherine, a very cute Swede at the desk in the tower, suggested several things I should see while I was in the city.

I started with some of the museums close to the tower. The Folkemuseum (or People's Museum) included an interesting display on Japanese culture, samurai, and zen. There was also an exhibit on Micronesia that discussed ''rite of passage'' rituals. The tatooing stuck out in my mind; could I withstand that sort of pain? The Greasepole was about the most dangerous rite of passage I've ever survived. The North American Indian exhibit provided a Swedish view of the ''wild west'' conquering. A montage of warring cowboys and indians suggested that the modern North American vision of the vicious conquering of America holds fast in Sweden. It struck me that the indian names in sverske had to go through two translations: from a native american dialect to english to swedish.

My Museum visits over my four-day stay included a visit to the impressive Museum of Architecture. I also spent a few hours at the Vasa Museum, the building in this photograph that looks like it has a mast sticking out its top.

The Vasa Museum was exceedingly cool. Inside were the reconstructed remains of a massive vessel that sank after being out of port for less than half an hour. I once earned the nickname ''Disaster Boy'' because of my interest in the Disasters in Engineering course offered at Queen's University. Naturally, I was immediately curious about the Vasa! Why did it meet such an untimely and embarassing fate?

Well, as with just about every engineering disaster, there were plenty of warning signs that were all ignored. During the final phases of testing, the engineers had thirty men run and forth three times across the deck. The boat swayed much more than it should have. So, what did the engineers do? They decided to abandon further testing. The King was aware of this, but he was also aware that the boat had cost five percent of the country's national income. The crowd was gathering to see it sent off, and he wasn't going to disappoint them.

There wasn't enough ballast in the bottom of the boat to account for the two, double-layered gundecks - a unique design. When the boat rocked back and forth as it was put to sea, water entered in through the turret holes, and down went the Vasa. With its sailors and their family members on board.

And history keeps repeating itself! The Challenger Disaster is a recent, well-known example of management ignoring blatantly obvious warning signs in an attempt to ward off public humiliation. The Vasa Museum contains both the world's largest jigsaw puzzle, and a lesson for all of us.

The technology museum featured exhibits ranging from motorcycles and aircraft (seen here) to a evolution of the Swedish mining industry. I don't have the background to appreciate a motorcycle exhibit the way that some visitors might. I was reminded of my highschool geography teacher, Mr. Halstead, a motorcycle fan who would have been in heaven.

Mr. Halstead once posited a theory: you can learn a lot about a city and its people from the subway system. Let's head way, way down here at Kungsträdgården to Stockholm's Blue Line, the coolest subway I've ever seen. After my visit to the Museum of Architecture, I wondered what some day will be said about this subway.

The Kungsträdgården stop itself featured all sorts of Roman statues and carvings as part of the decor. I wondered how the city could possibly have justified the ornate construction. Some of it was gaudy, but the overall effect was extremely impressive. ''This is public transport?!''

Further on at Kungsträdgården, statues of gods like this one stare at riders coming down the escalators. I decided to ride the blue line a bit to see what I'd discover.

At the next stop, Rådhuset, the classical architecture became mixed with a mining motif. Looking at the finishing touches of the tunnel that heads to Kungsträdgården, you're provided with a hint of the Roman architecture that lies ahead.

And turning around, you see wooden boxes and all of the elements of an operating mine. Each of the first several stops was decorated using a different theme. The next stop, Fridhemsplan, featured an ''undersea'' theme. A model of a sailing ship greeted riders at the bottom of the escalator, and fish tanks, fishing accessories and underwater images were found along the tracks.

Coming out of the subway near Rådhuset, I found these Obelisks that look like they came straight from the ending of the movie The Fifth Element. Indeed, there might be more than just a passing connection. These are more than decorative - the indicators on the sides of the obelisks provide real-time measurements of the air and water quality in the city. They were erected by King Carl XVI Gustav in 1994. Since then, the oh-eights have used them to keep an eye on the quality of their environment.

After spending time in Norway, a country almost completely without uniforms, I was intrigued by the pervasive presence of the Guard here at the National Palace.

The Palace is situated just on the outskirts of Old Stockholm, just where the cobblestone streets meet the harbour. I drifted back here several times just to enjoy the atmosphere. There were times during the day when the National Palace was swarming with tourists, but those times were easily avoided.

The National Guard was complete with its own brass band, here seen marching towards the castle down one of the streets of Stockholm. Being a former piper in a Highland Cadet Corps, it was interesting to note how the sound of a brass band affects the mood as they march past. It's sure a far cry from bagpipe tunes!

The band members were flanked by infantrymen and men on horseback wherever they went. It was quite an impressive display.

Just after noon, they marched to the National Palace for the Changing of the Guard ceremony. After five years of Cadet Inspections within the Saint Andrew's College Highland Cadet Corps, this was really something I could empathise with. The ceremony included quite a lot of brass band music, as well as the requisite commands barked by officers.

The marching was all lockstep, and the guards standing at attention were deadly serious. Here, the brass band marches off first after ther ceremony is complete. They had performed almost fifteen minutes of impressive brass band music while the guard stood at attention. Almost three weeks later, I still have some of the songs stuck in my head!

Bseide the National Palace stands the cathedral made famous for its statue of St. George slaying the dragon. The cathedral itself is beautiful, and a stark contrast to the simplistic beauty of Tromsø's unique Arctic Cathedral. This cathedral was massive and intimidating, and it struck me as amazing what work men and women had been put in here to worship God. Ironically, these beautiful churches also stand as a testament to the work of man. The religious would assert, of course, that it is God that has empowered us to perform this work.

I had a sort of religious experience within the church when I approached the table covered with prayers for intercession. Many were written in swedish that I can't understand. (The Swedish spoken language is quite close to Norwegian, but the written is sufficiently different that my sketchy control of Norwegian wasn't good enough.) Others written in English and Norwegian included prayers for family members, friends, victims of the earthquake in Turkey... there were so many who were in need of intercession.

I thought of my family back home in Canada that I was bound to see in a matter of days. I considered how blessed I was to be safely travelling through Europe. So many people were in such dire need of help. These tiny pieces of paper, more than any of the glory and majesty of the cathedral, had the capacity to make me feel very small.

I spent almost six hours at Skansen, an outdoor museum located on Djurgården, the island just east of Old Stockholm. Skansen features over 150 houses and farmsteads that have been transported to the island from all over Sweden. Swedish men and women dressed in attire that matches the era of the buildings are eager to help you understand and appreciate the exhibits. There's also a zoo, an aquarium, and a variety of other activities to take part in within the grounds. I could have spent several more days there and not really ''done'' Skansen.

The low light levels within this 300-year-old church at Skansen have helped preserve a sequence of paintings depicting the life of Christ. Unlike the Vasa, which underwent extensive treatment to ensure its continued existance, there is nothing that can be done to preserve these paintings any further.

This is the office within the teacher's accomodations in a schoolhouse that dates from the 1800s. As far as I could tell, teachers at the time were offered a fair lifestyle, even if their pay was low. Teaching was considered a lower middle-class job, but it looked like the teachers weren't suffering too much. I wonder if they had to divide their time between research, teaching and grad students back then.

It occurred to me only at this point that I should have been asking more of the Swedish women dressed in timely garb to pose for my photographs around Skansen. This lass, who comes from the north of Sweden (just east of Troms county in Norway, in fact!) is washing up dishes and pans the old fashioned way. She had spent the day making cheese the way they did 200 years ago, and it was delicious.

These reindeer at Skansen were the first I'd seen since Mona took me on a tour of the University of Tromsø campus way back in June. I'd say a good one-third of the postcards and souveneir shirts in Stockholm featured copulating moose and reindeer, and yet the only reindeer I saw during my three months here were in captivity! I should have headed to Finnmark with Kenneth and Tone, I suppose!

I spent a very pleasant last evening in Stockholm reading Sophie's World and drinking red wine in the old town. I left Eilidh a ''tusen takk'' note and took the Red Line of the Subway to the Sentralstation. From there, I was a train ride away from Copenhagen, the capital of Denmark.

But how does one get a train across the water if there isn't a bridge or tunnel to let it pass?