Stockholm is a historic seaport, built on 14 islands and yet oddly enough very much inland. Pull up a window with Google Earth and zoom in. See all those little rocks out there in the water? That is Stockholm’s Archipelago or Skärgård, You can think of it a few different ways,10,000 nasty little hull tearing rocks out in the harbor if you own a boat, or 10,000 little bare rocks I can sell for a fortune if you sell summer homes, or 10,000 little rocks that get in the way making it a looong looong way to go before they can open casino on your cruise boat. But mostly it is beautiful so long as your hull is intact.
Leaving Stockholm is always carries with it a stark wake up call; a reminder that I live in a city that is an island of “civilization”* in the middle of the Northern Tundra. It takes but a few minutes of driving to go from “downtown, bright lights, big city” to a semi tamed wilderness. Once we have gotten driven barely 5 minutes south of Södertälje the landscape is dominated by gently rolling rocky hills thick with pines. Only dense pines. Occasionally a vista opens up revealing a red farmhouse with its trim picked out in white surrounded by 20 or 30 acres of fields; then the world gets swallowed again by pines. Repeat this scene for the next 4 hours. After 3 hours you can start to add in some birch trees (björk träd) to the forest of pines. If you have ever been to coastal Maine then you get the idea. 
