We took a Ferry from the harbor near our hotel up Lake Malaren to Drottningholm Palace. It was a 50 minute ferry ride but that included several stops along the way. We could have gotten there by subway, ferry, or by vehicle. I’m glad we took the ferry as you can see the scenery changes as we moved up the lake. We went under several bridges and we went from the central city to the country in a short period. We took the Drottningholm Ferry which was built in 1909. The trip was no different than leaving a big city by car and driving out into the country. But in our case, we did it by boat. It was also easy to see why so many people have boats in Sweden. They can probably commute by boat much faster than by vehicle and it’s probably far more pleasant. It was quite a nice boat ride the day we made the trip despite some slight drizzle of rain.

Lake Malaren, or Lake Malar, is just west of Stockholm. It lies at the junction with Salt Bay, an arm of the Baltic Sea. At one time, this lake was a bay of the Baltic Sea and seagoing vessels sailed far into interior Sweden on its waters. But due to movement by the earth’s crust, a rock barrier formed at the mouth of the bay so that by about the year 1200 ships could no longer enter its waters. Today, Lake Malaren is Sweden’s third largest lake. The lake covers an area of 440 square miles, about 75 miles across, about 189 square miles of actual lake, and there are more than 1200 islands in the lake. The lake today is only about one foot higher than the Baltic Sea. Because of that and other factors, the Baltic sometimes runs into the lake, causing it to be slightly salty.

This post will be five photos taken from the harbor in central Stockholm on up Lake Malaren towards Drottningholm.

The first photo is still in town and an interesting display of buildings and roofs.

I would say that the second photo is away from the old central area but definitely still Stockholm.

I am not sure if the third photo is in Stockholm or not but it’s in the metropolitan area and sort of looks like the suburbs.

The fourth photo sort of seemed like we were getting out of town and into the country.

The last photo was our last stop for the ferry before the palace. I think only a couple of people got onto the ferry at this stop.