August 15th, 2026

Sweden has over 265,000 islands, the most of any country in the world. The largest is Gotland and our next stop was to the town of Visby that is a UNESCO world heritage site because of the 2.2 mile 13th century medieval wall with its 27 original watch towers.

We docked very close to the old city and the path to the old town was very well marked and was a little less than a mile walk.

Some of the watch towers surrounding the city. In several places you could walk up to the watch towers and & walk along the wall, enjoy the views. Visby is also know as the city of roses and most of the houses in town had huge rose gardens.

We went into 1 church, St Mary’s, and they were having a concert with a pianist and flutist.

The view inside St Marys.

We walked a lot of the wall and enjoyed several view points.

View from the sea side of the wall and Kathy standing inside one of the towers. The town had a craft fair going on in a square so we looked but found nothing we needed to buy.

In the middle of town there is an old church built in 1233 called St Karin’s. The church was left to ruin in the 16th century when most of Sweden shifted to Lutheranism.

We found another bakery and shared another cinnamon bun. Not as good as the one in Stockholm but still very good.

St Karin’s church

The town symbol is the ram and these concrete rams were all over town. They roll and are used as barricades for whatever is needed.

We walked around for about 3 hours and then found a grocery store on our way back to the ship. We were supposed to leave port at 3pm but it was so windy the boat could not leave port so we waited another 2 hours before sailing.

Tomorrow, Sunday the 16th, is a sea day and we are looking forward to it.