Stockholm

Sweden, home of ᗅᗺᗷᗅ, IKEA, creator of MineCraft and this year’s Eurovision Song Contest.

We flew into Stockholm from Tromso, Norway and immedietly found Stockholm was very different to Oslo. The city itself seemed much more alive and had lots of old buildings painted in bright colours. There seems to be people everywhere (might possible be due to the Men’s Hockey thing).

We visited the Swedish Royal Palace and Freya got her first taste of the mass tour groups, which I encountered on my last trip to Europe. Lets just say she wasn’t pleased when I told her the 3 groups we saw today, pales in comparison to what we’ll see when we visit Paris and Rome. Apart from this the palace tour was very interesting and reminded me a lot of Versailles in France. The palace itself is also still used today for royal and state affairs and official guest from other countries have stayed in the rooms we were walking through.
After the palace, we visited Stockholm Cathedral which had a lot of bricks used in the interior (see picture below), this was very different to previous churches I’ve been in which have either been marble or whitewashed concrete.

A short stroll away and we were down by the harbour in Sweden’s “Old Town” –

Wandering through these streets reminded me of wandering around Rome, with’s it narrow alleyways and large squares with restaurants around the edge.

Freya and I both agree that Stockholm is a really nice city with lots of green spaces and parks, and we could see ourselves living here. I can certainly see why Stockholm is referred to as the “Venice of the North”.

There is an island about 10mins from Central Stockholm called Djurgården, which is home to forests, grassy fields, walking and cycling tracks, museums and Grona Land (an amusement park).
We visited this island to see the Nordic and Vasa Museums, as well as the newly opened ᗅᗺᗷᗅ museum. A short trip to Grona Land which is celebrating it’s 130th anniversary and has the worlds highest starflyer (it’s a ride with chairs hanging off it that spin around in the air), offered a really good view of Stockholm.
The Nordik Museum was originally built to house all sorts of Nordic items, but now just holds Swedish related exhibitions. It was interesting to see how Swedish culture has progressed through the centuries.
The Vasa Museum, is solely dedicated to the enormous Vasa ship, which was built in the 17th Century. The ship sank only 2kms into it’s maiden voyage and sat on the bottom of Stockholm harbour for over 300 yrs before being salvaged and restored. It’s very impressive to see up close and 98% of what you see is the original ship. I’ve included a picture below but it doesn’t really convey how large this ship actually is. For those who are interested, the ship sank due to poor design making it too top heavy, a gust of wind in the sails caused the ship to tilt to one side, letting water flow in through the lower cannon holes, thus sinking the ship.

No visit to Stockholm would be complete without a visit to the newly opened ᗅᗺᗷᗅ Museum where one can view an assortment of the band’s costume and memorabilia, as well as a number of interactive displays. The museum takes you through from the bands formation to cessation and the audio guide has lots of interesting facts about the band provided by members of the band. I’m still hoping they might do a small performance at the Grand Final on Saturday but we will have to wait and see.

As already mentioned in my previous post, our hotel room was extremely small, but our hotel was centrally located, the room had a decent shower and the Internet was ok, but the lighting needed improvenment as I was showering in semi-darkness. I wouldn’t recommended it unless you were a bit desperate (as we were).

As I’m writing this now, we’re on the train from Stockholm to Copenhagen, and Freya’s managed to eat half the complimentary mint chocolates provided in 1st class (she was feeling a bit sick as the train is travelling quite fast and is a little bit bumpy and she thought the mint would help). The Swedish countryside is really beautiful with lots of lakes, forests and rolling hills.

Can’t wait till Eurovision, so I’ll leave you with this 360 I took from on top of the  TV broadcast tower just outside Central Stockholm (it’s not a perfect 360 as the top of the tower was quite large, but it doesn’t look too bad) –

Adjö