Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, and the most populous city in all of the Nordic countries was the first stop in our 7 night trip at the beginning of December 2017. The city expands over 14 islands and is surrounded by the very cold, Baltic Sea. We came to Stockholm with quite low expectations as we absolutely loved Copenhagen and didn’t think we’d like Stockholm as much. I’d say, we were very pleasantly surprised.

We flew, lovely and early again, from Gatwick. This time, the flight was about 2.5 hours and again we were using the airline Norweigan. Norweigan has definitely come out of nowhere and has solidified itself as a budget friendly airline with a lot of great routes. Apparently, it’s the cheapest airline to fly London to Singapore at the moment. Great for everyone wanting to head to Asia or Australasia. Our bags were waiting for us on the carousel which is always a welcomed treat and we headed to tourist information to buy our 72 hour travel passes. I’d read a lot about how to get into the city from the airport and to be honest, it’s a bit of a pain.

The quickest option is to go via the Arlanda airport express, but it is so unbelievably expensive and isn’t included in the 72 hour travel pass as it’s run by a private company. Similarly, the train station at Arlanda is also privately owned, so to access it you have to pay a fee on top of the 72 hour pass to enter and leave it (around £13 a go). The lady at the tourist information told us that our best option was to get the local bus outside to another train station about 15 minutes away and then take the train, which would all then be covered in the 72 hour travel pass. I’d read about this option before and was a little hesitant as it would mean our travel into the city centre, not even our hotel, would be about 70 minutes, but actually, I’d say it only took an hour and we got to see the countryside and smaller towns on the way in. We decided to use this method on the way back to the airport as well as it was super easy and it meant we could spend more money on meatballs.

Once into the city centre we took the underground and a tram to our accommodation, taking about another 20 minutes. Our hotel, Motel L Hammarby, was brilliant. It was super modern, clean and really budget friendly in a part of the world which isn’t cheap at all. I wouldn’t hesitate to stay here again. We quickly dumped our bags and headed out to our first tourist attraction – Fotografiska.

Fotografiska is the National photography museum of Sweden and we absolutely loved it. We had been toying with whether to visit or not, but we were so glad we did as it was fantastic. The exhibits were modern and fun, and the museum stays open really late so it’s a great evening activity in a city that gets pretty cold in the Winter. Some of our favourite exhibits included pieces from a British photographer who uses X-rays to create his images and also photography of birds of prey and indigenous people from Mongolia.

After exploring the museum, we enjoyed a coffee in the cafe, which overlooked the water and gave us good views back over the city. The cafe was super cool, as are most places in Scandinavia, and the coffee was amazing.

We’d had quite a busy day travelling so we didn’t want to do much else that evening. I’d read up on budget friendly eating options in Stockholm before we came as Denmark was expensive and we’d heard Sweden was more so and Norway even worse than that. I’d read about a restaurant on the super trendy island of Sodermalm (where all the hipsters live), which was meant to be a great budget option. La Neta is a Mexican restaurant and is super delicious. You order your food at a counter, a bit like any fast-food restaurant, and take it back to your table. We ordered some beef tacos and cheese and bean quesadillas. Wow…. it was unbelievable. With our drinks, we paid about £14 in total, which is completely unheard of in Scandinavia. I can’t recommend it enough.

We walked back through Sodermalm to our island, and it started snowing. Yay!! Simon’s sheer joy for the entire 8 day trip every time he saw snow (unless he was falling over because of ice) was amazing. After all the hot weather, and annoying mosquitoes, a Christmassy, snowy and cold trip was exactly what we needed. We went to the local store and picked up some pastry treats and drinks to have in the hotel room. From the picture, try and guess who went for the more authentic, Swedish experience. Julmust was strange… but delicious. I love Root Beer and it was a bit like Root Beer mixed with coke. A bit of an illegitimate love child shall we say. Simon wasn’t too impressed.

The next morning we got up at a reasonable time and headed down for breakfast. A little trick for you, if you book directly through the hotel’s website you get free breakfast. Now you all know why I do so much research before we travel. The breakfast was great. Typically Scandinavian in that you had the option of mueslis, eggs, cheese, meats, breads and sides such as cucumber, tomato and pickle (who’d have thought?!).We filled our bellies to capacity in the hope that this would keep us going for a while.

We jumped on the tram and then train and headed to our next ‘must do’ in any city, a free walking tour. The company that we used in Stockholm runs a few different tours, but the three they mainly advertise are for the old city (Gamla Stan, the main city centre and Sodermalm (the trendy future). We decided that we wanted to go on the main city centre and Gamla Stan tour in our 3 days, as we would be heading through Sodermalm quite a lot anyway.

Our guide was there waiting and very quickly we realised that he definitely wasn’t Swedish. He was an Australian man who had fallen in love with a Swedish girl 10 years or so ago and when she said she was pregnant, he had decided to stay in Sweden permanently. I have to say, we hardly took any photos in the first part of the tour. 1) it was cold and 2) we were pretty much just walking around a city centre that could have been anywhere in England. We were told a lot of interesting stories about Queen Christina, Ikea, ABBA, Nobel Prizes and the true meaning of the term, Stockholm Syndrome. I’ll only go talk about this one now, as I want you to go and experience the rest for yourself.

The term Stockholm Syndrome means to have feelings of trust or affection by a hostage towards their captors. This feeling was formally named in 1973 when four hostages were taken in a Swedish bank by Jan-Erik Olsson, a convict on parole. Swedish police were called immediately and gun shots were fired at one of the policeman by the captor, but this didn’t stop the situation lasting 5 days. Jan-Erik negotiated with the police to have his friend from prison released to join him as well as 3 million kronor, two guns, bulletproof vests, helmets and a fast car. Why they gave him all of this, is beyond me. During the five days the captor called the Prime Minister saying he was going to kill the hostages, the next day one of the hostages rang the Prime Minister and said she was displeased with the Prime Minister’s attitude and wanted the robbers and hostages released without conviction. After the whole situation was finished, both of the robbers were charged and convicted, but none of the hostages would testify against the captors. They sympathised with them and only ever spoke of their dissatisfaction with how the whole thing was dealt with by the police and government. The whole thing is really fascinating and since Jan-Erik’s release from prison he has formed close relationships with many of the hostages and their families. Bizarre!

We walked around some more hearing interesting stories from Stockholm’s history. I’m really glad we went on this walking tour because, even though it wasn’t visually very interesting, we were able to get a true representation of the main events that have lead to where Stockholm, and Sweden, is today, which is a very progressive and modern city.

Our tour ended across the water from Gamla Stan with a view of the Royal Palace in the background. We were just in time to go and watch the changing of the guard ceremony, but despite it only being about 12:30pm, it was already quite dusky and very very cold. We watched about 20 minutes of the changing of the guard ceremony which was really interesting, but by the end we just needed to warm up.

We headed to Stortorget, a small square in Gamla Stan, which is probably one of the most photographed spots in Stockholm with it’s pretty coloured houses and old charm. There was a Christmas market in the square (not very impressive), but at this stage, we just needed to warm up, so we headed into a cafe called Kaffekoppen to enjoy a little bit of hygge. We shared a sandwich, had some coffee and some AMAZING raspberry tart and custard (I’m drooling writing this). The cafe had that wonderful hygge feeling to it and we left feeling content and warm.

The wonderful thing about the 72 hour travel pass in Stockholm is that you can travel on trains, the underground, trams, boats and buses. They definitely have the travelling thing down. With this in mind we wandered a little through Gamla Stan, knowing we’d be back tomorrow, and headed towards the pier to take a ferry over to museum island, or Djurgarden. We had two museums in mind for this trip, but Stockholm has around 70 museums all waited to be explored. If you’ve read my blogs previously, we’re not necessarily ‘museum’ people, more often than not choosing the adventure and great outdoors instead, but this is definitely something we embraced in Stockholm.

Once on the island we headed to the Vasa museum. This museum houses the Vasa ship which capsized and sank in Stockholm in 1628 on it’s maiden voyage… whoops! 333 years after it sank, the shop was salvaged and preserved, now with a permanent home on museum island. The Vasa is the only preserved 17th century ship in the world, which is pretty amazing in itself. It is an absolutely stunning ship, with intricate carvings and detail, but the whole way round the museum I couldn’t help but think, they actually thought this ship would sail? Firstly, from the pictures you may not be able to see, but this ship is very bulbous in the middle and extremely tall… a recipe for disaster I think. Secondly, they had literally no idea how to ballast the ship, it was naturally heavier on the port side than the starboard and thirdly, the ship was heavier above water than below. So, when a gust of wind hit the ship, it keeled and started to fill with water through the cannon holes on the sides.

Regardless of this, walking around the ship was a wonderful experience and it brought back memories of a school trip to see the Mary Rose. 30 people died in the sinking of the Vasa, and to this day this remains a huge part of Swedish history.

After our history lesson, we took a little bit of a less serious approach to the later part of the afternoon. The ABBA museum was our next stop. Before I start, I am not an ABBA fanatic. I love the music and I love the movie, Mamma Mia, as much as the next person, but to say I’m a ‘super fan’ would be ridiculous. We entered the building, Simon quite reluctantly, open minded.

Let’s just get this out of the way, I loved it! The whole museum is interactive and on the way round you can record yourself singing ABBA songs, mixing tracks, dancing and a whole host of other activities. I dragged Simon into most of these, but promised that the videos and photos would remain private (until a drunken evening, but don’t tell Simon). We came away feeling really uplifted and jolly, which was the perfect way to start our evening.

We wandered around the city centre Christmas lights for a while and ended up at Vigarda for dinner, which is a well ranked burger restaurant. The burgers were so yummy and, unlike the UK, they came lovely and medium in the middle. This was another restaurant that came up as an affordable option whilst I was researching Stockholm before the trip. With our bellies full, we headed to Hard Rock to pick up our Hurricane glass and then walked back to our hotel.

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Our last full day in Stockholm was another day of adventure. We had a lie in because we are on holiday and why shouldn’t we. After stocking up on food at another yummy breakfast buffet we headed over to the meeting point for the Gamla Stan walking tour.

Gamla Stan, also known as the Old Town, is on the largest and best preserved medieval city centres in Europe and was where Stockholm was founded in 1252. We started the tour by walking across a really beautiful bridge near to the Parliament buildings and the home of the Prime Minister. The weather was pretty overcast but as you will hopefully see from the pictures it didn’t take away any charm of Gamla Stan.

As we strolled around the pedestrianised streets we saw all the beautiful coloured buildings that Gamla Stan is known for. We saw sites such as Stockholm Cathedral, Jarnpojke (the Iron boy statue) and the Saint George and the Dragon statue. The Iron boy statue is the smallest in Stockholm and the locals like to dress him up in knit wear. He’s said to be a fertility statue (hence the shiny head), which meant I definitely didn’t touch him. The George and the Dragon statue was commissioned to represent the victory of the Swedish over the Danish at the Battle of Brunkeberg in 1471. The square and streets around this statue were absolutely stunning.

We then went back into Stortorget square to see the colourful buildings and we learnt that the square was the site of the Stockholm Bloodbath. In 1520 around 90 Swedish noblemen were massacred by the Danish King Christian the 2nd because he wanted to rid the city of anyone who could make a claim for the throne.

We walked past a Viking runestone, which made me feel like I was in a Thor movie. Unfortunately, Chris Hemsworth was nowhere to be seen.

We ended up at one of the most instagramable (or so I’m told) streets in Stockholm, Marten Trotzigs Grand. This street is the narrowest street in Stockholm, at its narrowest only 90 centimetres wide. This street reminded us of Melbourne with it’s graffiti, and because we loved Melbourne, this was a great memory to be reminded of.

After the walking tour ended we continued to stroll around, had some more fika and coffee in another amazing cafe before heading over to far west of Gamla Stan. Here we had a little touch of the Baltic sea and yes… it was baltic.

We walked across the bridge and headed back over to Sodermalm island to tick off the last touristy activity on our list, Monteliusvagen. Monteliusvagen is a 500 metre walking path which provides amazing views back over Stockholm. It was really picturesque up here and quite romantic, but super chilly in December.

I decided that I wanted to buy a Swedish cooking book from the photography museum so we walked back there to pick that up and after this had the worst experience I think I’ve had travelling full stop. Soon after leaving the photography museum we walked past an elderly gentleman who looked like he had either fallen and hit his head or been hit by a car. He was being given CPR by another passer by, but if we’d been about 30 seconds earlier Simon or I would have been the ones to have done it. We can’t be sure what happened as we were walking up a flight of stairs to street level as whatever happened happened. His head was bleeding profusely and was unconscious and not breathing. To be honest it shook me up. I’ve never seen someone being given CPR and despite having been through multiple first aid courses, they don’t prepare you for the reality of it. However, I know that despite the shock of the situation, if we’d have been the ones to have had to do it, we would have been able to. We assessed the situation and realised that there was nothing we could do, so we left the area as the paramedics arrived. I’ve tried to find out what happened to him since, but have struggled to find an answer.

Before our amazing dinner (keep reading), we walked around Gamla Stan at night. It’s so pretty, full of little Ikea like shops and cafes selling Gloog (mulled wine). It turns out that the Gloog in Sweden isn’t alcoholic though… what?!

The last stop of Stockholm was to ‘Meatballs for the People’ a trendy meatball restaurant in Sodermalm. We love Ikea Swedish meatballs, who doesn’t, but we had to try the real deal whilst in Sweden. I had reindeer meatballs and Simon had wild boar. Both were absolutely delicious and were washed down with some yummy Lingonberry juice, just like at Ikea.

The next day we headed off to the airport for our flight to Tromso, Norway. I’ll write a separate blog on that part of our trip as this is getting a little long now. Thank you for reading right to the end, if anyone actually did!

P.S. Stockholm has some amazing subway stations.