Drottningholm, and weird t-shirts

Drottningholm, from the east.

On our first day of sightseeing in Sweden, we decided to go to Drottningholm and see the palace there. This is a very nice place, and lots of tourists go there. There is no really easy way to go there without a car (you can take subway, and then bus the last stretch, but it is not very convenient) but my brother and his Japanese girlfriend decided to join us and since my brother recently bought a car he drove us there.

Drottningholm, from the west.

Apart from us, there were also many bus loads of tourists coming with chartered buses. At least three large groups of Japanese tourists were walking around, so we listened in on a Japanese guide in some of the rooms (joining a normal guided tour costs a lot of extra money).

Since I was wearing a t-shirt that says "I am not Japanese" in Japanese, quite a few of the Japanese tourists were pointing at me and laughing. They also seemed confused when me and my brother talked to each other in Japanese (we are blond, and thus do not look very Japanese). My brother's girlfriend was very unhappy with my choice of t-shirt. She even took a picture of me and complained about my lack of style on Facebook, haha.

Since the king and queen actually live in the palace, there are armed guards placed here and there.

It was raining when we were visiting the palace, but we walked around inside the palace when the rain was at its worst, so it was not so bad. The current king and queen of Sweden live in the Drottningholm palace, but you are allowed to walk around inside anyway, though not in the parts where they actually live.