Museums ad infinitum

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On our Baltic trip, we saw loads of museums, but the ones that were most memorable were the ones we couldn't go in.
Museum of the Occupation--We passed this building when we first arrived in Vilnius on our way to our hotel. We walked back to it that evening, because Mark loves military history stuff, but it was
The outside of the Occupation Museum
closed because it was Father's Day in Lithuania. So we tried going to it the next day, but apparently many museums in the area stay closed on Monday. Each time we tried, we walked a significant length to reach it, which made it all the more frustrating.







Kiek in de Kök--Located in Tallinn, Estonia. From what our guide told us, this means "Peek in the kitchen," but it is not, in fact, a kitchen, but an artillery tower from the 15th century that is now a museum of the town's fortifications. We tried going there after first arriving in Tallinn, but since it
was only an hour before it closed, the museum recommended we wouldn't have enough time and that we should come back another day. Then we tried to go again on Sunday, but it was closed for some national holiday. We tried again the following day, and they were open (hooray!), but their card-reader wasn't functioning and we didn't have any cash, and didn't have the time to find an ATM etc before we had to leave for Sweden. It was so absurd how difficult it was to get into that museum. So we took a picture of being in the lobby.

 Museums we actually saw, in no particular order:

 The Nobel Museum in Sweden--about the life of Alfred Nobel and then highlights of several of the Nobel Prize winners

 The Vasa Museum in Sweden--about a ship built in the 1620s that sank 20 minutes into it's maiden voyage. A failure at the time, but as one guide said, "If the ship hadn't sunk, you wouldn't be here providing funding for my job." There's a bright side to every failure :)



The Estonian Maritime Museum in Tallinn--we didn't have enough time to adequately explore this place, which was amazing. It had over 100 ship models, as well as a retired submarine that we could go in.



 The Royal Palace in Sweden--not actually a museum, but it has tours.




 The Epping Tower museum--a small exhibit on the history of Tallinn's fortifications


 The Museum of Art in Sweden--self-explanatory. But here are pics:


There's more that we saw than this, but this post is already picture-heavy, and I hit the highlights.
Yay culture!

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