Sunday, 24 February 2013

Stockholm

My husband, me and two of our friends went to Stockholm, Kiruna, Harstad, Tromso and Oslo together over 12 days as a holiday.  Our main goal was to see the northern lights -which we did! - but also to visit the cities a little as well.  Needless to say we had a great time, I think Stockholm and Oslo are some of my most favorite cities to visit now: my list includes for many different reasons Rome, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Banner Elk, London, Whitby, Krakow and Nashville.

I loved Scandinavia (or what I have seen of it so far) for many reasons (the people were always nice, good food, snowy but not too rainy and beautiful landscape) but I really loved all the wood flooring and real wood everywhere; tables, chairs, banisters etc.  It was amazing to see after years in HK where plastic and chipboard live and die. I mean I know that wood goes moldy in HK, but I missed real wood features.  Even Stockholm and Oslo airport had wood flooring and banisters - which was a nice treat coming off the plane.

I didn't love the cost. My husband called it one of those places you visit - like Tokyo - where, when you look into your wallet you feel you have been mugged, only to find out actually no one violently took your money or invaded your wallet, but the result is still the same - no money left over.  It costs a lot to just get around on a regular basis as a tourist, so you must save up before going.

I hope to write about each place we visited during this trip individually - so starting with Stockholm here are some highlights:

Stockholm airport was a little funny because it had an ABBA tribute area - apparently they are opening an ABBA music museum or something like that soon.  I do love ABBA but I didn't realize that Swedish people did as well, perhaps they don't and this will just bring the tourists - I don't know.

I love ABBA but WOW a whole museum??
Stockholm was amazing because of it's age.  The architecture was beautiful nearly everywhere we went in the city center and old town.

old town
old town street

old town street? not sure if it is a street or an alley
 I think it is used as a street though
Also the Swedes and Norwegians seem to love Trolls, which I haven't figured out. There is some amazing troll art and figures all over both Stockholm and Oslo - it makes me happy because I love trolls too!


And of course this means that I couldn't resist buying one for myself.  I got a little gypsy woman troll and a gypsy man troll dancing. It is lovely.

The Palace in Stockholm - oddly- has the longest zipper in the world (48 meters long). It is in this really long hall that tourists are allowed to walk through regularly so the zipper is for the half of the carpet that is rolled out of the way when tourists visit.  The Palace was nice to visit, but if you don't have much time I would go to the Vasa Museum instead.

one part of the palace
The Vasa was a ship that basically sailed for like an hour or something, then sunk just off the coast of the city.  But it is amazing because it was the first of it's kind in so many ways.  It was the largest military ship made in Sweden up to that time and it had tons of guns - all of which were uniform in size, another revolutionary thing to have at the time (1600's or something like that).  After it sunk it sat that the bottom of the harbor in Stockholm for like 400 years - until someone in the 1950's brought it up to the surface and slowly put it back together.  Amazingly it is nearly whole (something like 90% original features) and it quite beautiful.

Vasa
Vasa
Vasa
After the Vasa museum we hung around Stockholm and went to a Viking bar - which was a blast! People were dressed up (staff and patrons), there was live music, and a really cute bartender that looked very Nordic. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of the bartender, just too embarrassed to ask.



viking bar

viking desert with wooden bowls and spoons - yum!
Here we drank mead, listened to music and people speaking Swedish and had some desert.  It was a great night in Stockholm.  The next day we headed for Kiruna and the Ice Hotel - which will come in the next post.

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