Stockholm

Our second city on holiday was Stockholm, Sweden. We had two full days and our plan was not to run around too much and just enjoy walking around. The first night we arranged to fly in to have time to eat dinner there. We asked for a recommendation at the hotel and ended up at a place that had the food we were looking for, but a bit touristy. The food was ok but the atmosphere was not quite right. We stopped by a bakery/coffee house still serving some dessert and had a little treat.

Our first day, the plan was to tour the City Hall (where the Nobel Prize Banquet is held each year) first. There were some nice views of the city across the islands from there. The tour is pretty average, but some places of the hall are quite interesting. I climbed the tour for more views of the city and it was a good viewpoint. Next we walked toward Kungsträdgården to just walk around the park. Along the way we stopped along the Drottninggatan pedestrian walkway and ate at the Pickwick Irish bar, as they also had some Swedish food. Kacey got a delicious Jansson´s temptation, sliced herring, potatoes & onions baked in cream. We were considering a canal tour and while walking around we read more about it and booked a boat tour of the city for later in the day. We walked around the park a bit enjoying the sites before getting on the boat. The boat tour was good. It was nice to see lots of islands and different parts of the city. We even saw the two beaches they have. Not having done many of these tours before, I learned that I much prefer live guides as opposed to electronic headphone-only guides. After the tour we were going to walk the pedestrian way back toward the hotel and find food along the way. We couldn't find any local cuisine so we ended up at an Italian place for pizza.

Our second day was spent in Gamla Stan, the old town. We started off going to the Cathedral. Then our plan was to visit the different areas of the palace most of the day. We went to the royal chapel, apartments, treasury, Gustav III's Museum of Antiquities, Tre Kronor Museum, and the Royal Armory. We also visited the Royal Coin Cabinet next door. Most of these places were no photo, but there was nothing super special here. It rained a bit while going in the first few places, but we were fine and it stopped by time we were done. We walked toward Stortorget square to find some dinner. We stopped in a bakery and had a delicious hazelnut cream cookie. We ate dinner at De Svarta Fåren and we had pretty good food. I had a moose burger and Kacey's delicious raw spiced salmon with Västerbotten cheese, fennel, red onion, dill, horseradish and Swedish mustard sauce. The kids and Kacey got ice cream afterward at Lejonet & Björnen. We slowly walked back to the hotel along the pedestrian street, and I once again went to the bakery nearby the hotel for my treat.

The next morning we got up for a long bus ride to the far away Skavsta airport to get to Krakow. Stockholm was an ok city. It is pretty in parts, and the food is good if you are lucky enough to find a good place (but we found this was hard), but once again expensive. There are some nice outdoor areas which we didn't have time to visit.

Pictures from Stockholm can be found here.