Our Adventure to Sigtuna and Beyond

Readers I apologize, I did something inadvertently and lost most of my last blog. Search as I did, most of the night, I did not recover it. Alas, my technical  support was sleeping!
   
     To continue, where I left you, our first adventure outside of Stockholm, took us to the little town of Sigtuna. (We have pictures, but will need a few weeks to figure out how to incorporate them.) Sigtuna is Sweden's second oldest town and was founded in 980AD. As you might guess, it became a center of Christianity. Tom was thrilled to tour the remaining three churches of this medieval village. The main street was beautiful despite the years. It was lined with colorful wooden buildings and the town hall was the smallest in Sweden, built in 1744. We weren't sure what the towns outside of Stockholm would be like. Would they contain a hotel, restaurants, etc. Sigtuna did contain a hotel, it was lovely, perched on top of a cliff,  looking down on the water. It also had a few small restaurants and shops.
     From Sigtuna, we headed for the fourth largest city in Sweden, Uppsala. Uppsala is known as a university town. The first university in Scandinavia was built here in 1477. It is a busy city full of students and historical buildings. We had lunch and then explored the Gothic Catherdral, castle, and botanical gardens. As we were walking back to the car along the Gamla Stan (old city), we noticed a gathering of people and a blockade. We went to investigate and found they had closed off several of the streets. The Hollywood film crew was in town filming the movie Millennium. We stayed to watch many takes of a parade scene which came right down the center of town. We didn't see any of the major actors, but regardless, we felt very lucky to catch the filming. I had heard rumors they were filming in Uppsala, because Stockholm would not close off streets. But, everything has been kept quiet, so large crowds would not show up during filming.
     For those of you not familar with the Millennium movie, the film is based on the books by Steg Larsson. He is a Swedish author who sets his stories in Stockholm. Most of his good guys, live in Slussen. A southern suberb of Stokholm. Only one of his characters, the evil rapist, murderer, comes from our part of town, Vasastaden. If  you are coming for a visit, his three books could be fun reading. During your visit, I could incorporate a Steg Larsson tour, over some of the prettiest streets of  Stockholm. His first title is, The Girl With The Dragon Tatoo. I will leave you  to rush to your bookstore and check in with you later in the week!