A Trip to Stockholm

My wife and I took a 3-day trip to Stockholm the previous weekend (Thursday morning to Saturday night) and I thought I would share the highlights of the journey here as well - some of them sailing and military history related. Three days is enough for a lot of things, fortunately, and we skipped the smaller museums (like the Viking Museum and Museum of Wrecks) AND the ABBA Museum on purpose.

We woke up at 2:00am on Thursday and got a cab to the airport. The plane was leaving at 6:20am from Budapest Airport to Arlanda, and we got there by about 3:00. We passed the security check in about five minutes, waited until the shops and restaurants opened, then drank some coffee and ate a croissant before joining the queue at the designated passenger gate. 

During the voyage, above the cloud cover the weather was great. The plane was heading straight north and I sat next to the window on the right side of the plane, so the rising sun shone right into my face, thus, although I tried to sleep, I could not.

Once we landed the situation was a bit more bleak, light drizzle and very dark clouds welcomed us and the temperature was slightly above freezing. We expected the cold so dressed well, catching only a mild cold which was, again, something we prepared for and brought some meds to take care of.

It took about half an hour from landing and finding a bench on the airport to purchase public transport tickets on our smartphones, as the payment process of the local company's (SL) application was rather clumsy. For example, we had to buy two tickets each, one for boarding the train at the airport and one for regular transportation, and there was no basket function, so we had to start all over again for each purchase. In the meantime, a very large queue (literally hundreds of people) was forming for the security check, and we sort of got worried that we would have to arrive a lot earlier on our way back (turns out this is not always the case).

We went down to the train platform and after a while figured out which direction to take. The commuter train took us to the city center in about 40 minutes. I sort of thought that public transport in Sweden would be way better than in Budapest, but it's actually kind of on the same level by way of comfort, speed and cleanliness.

Then we went straight to the Vasa museum using the tram line, and spent a good amount of time there, viewing the ship and the other exhibits thoroughly.

I would like to build a model of the Vasa in the future (first a plastic kit, then a wooden version), so it was a good occasion to marvel at the engineering and photograph many details.

The gift shop of the museum is also excellent, we bought an ugly Christmas ornament, the children's book about the Vasa Piglet, a deck of playing cards and an MDF-backed coaster with a print of the ship.

By the time we left the museum, it was about 1:30pm, so we went to the city center for a lunch. We snacked on some Fikabröd, but we wished for something warm(er). Wishing to try the local specialties, we stopped by a MAX restaurant, which was full of people and the automatic ordering terminals didn't work at all - something of a recurring theme with modern technology. So, as a safety meausre, we went to the nearest McDonalds instead, where the software was in working order. After taking a stroll and visiting Gustav II Adolph's equestrian statue, we chose to occupy our hotel room, which was a twenty minute bus ride away. 

After getting our room and some rest, we left our baggage there (we travelled lightly and had a small backpack each, but it was still added weight) and took the metro to the old town, where we visited the Science Fiction Bookstore. I've checked their online shop beforehand and saw they had a print of Roger Zelazny's Merlin Cycle, which I hadn't managed to find in a long while. We also bought a very fine edition of E.A. Poe's collected works at a discount price. 

We walked around for a while, checking the cheesy souvenir shops to bring something home, then, as the clouds disappeared and the sun was shining, we chose to board the Slussen ferry and took a round trip with it. This was my first time to see tall ships in person, the two largest ones, Tre Kronor and Af Chapman, anchoring near the ferry's route.

From Slussen we used the metro again to return to the hotel, finally managing to order a takeaway at the nearest MAX. The terminals were exceedingly slow, the food was okay, not really worth more than being able to tell we had tried it. At this point, we were awake for about eighteen hours, so we quickly went to sleep after having dinner.

We woke up at about 7am on Friday, and took out breakfast at the hotel's kitchen, which was really excellent. Then we went to the Skansen, viewing the Aquarium first, with many exotic animals.

Then we took a stroll around Skansen. The weather was still sort of bad, so we did not look at everything. The bears in the indigenous animals exhibit responded to this by hibernating and not showing at all, something I approve of.

This is an original runestone at the center of the place, with a reconstructed paint job.

I took a few photos for future references on timber buildings, as I'm planning some 17th century Eastern European clashes with my growing 28mm forces.

When we finished, we took the ferry again and walked up to the Royal Palace. We were really interested in one wing only, but that was also huge, so it took a lot of time to explore.

All of the rooms, corridors and chambers are lavishly decorated, and I noticed that many of the buildings' exteriors do also have golden decorations, something "liberating" forces in Budapest preferred to remove towards the end of World War Two.

It was about 2:00pm when we left the palace, and went downtown for a meal. We failed to take a seat at the famous Kajsas Fisk restaurant as it was chock full, so settled for a sandwich and coffee instead.

On Friday afternnon we checked some more book shops and a second hand store, but they did not really offer much. If you want good English books in Stockholm, my advice is to go straight to the Science Fiction Bookstore, or there's one opposite to the train station which sells models and military history books, including Ospreys.

For dinner we bought some prepared cold meals in the supermarket nearest to the hotel, which was of a good quality, and that sort of concluded our second day. 

Our plane was scheduled to leave at 9:20pm Saturday night, so, waking up again at around 7:00am, we've still had a lot of time to spend. We took a big breakfast (incl. warm food for the day) at the hotel, rested some, then checked out and went to see the Sjöhistoriska museum.

This is a bit further off of the city center and there was a large crowd on the bus, but to our relief they turned out to be visiting a temporary Monet light art exhibition at the same location.

We spent a good time at Sjöhistoriska, again photographing all the excellent ship models there. It is sort of customary to buy a badge I attach to my travelling backpack in the countries we visit, so I bought one showing the lightship Finngrundet at the gift shop.

They also had a pair of 25-ton breechloading guns at the museum's yard, which were quite a sight.

We've still had some more time to spend, so wandered around a bit. As a cautionary rule, we aim to arrive at unknown airports a lot earlier than the scheduled flight (which was delayed an hour anyway), so we went back to the city center to board the commuter train at around 3:00pm. We did not find the train platfrom on our way back at first, but asked for directions and went to the proper station.

After our arrival at the airport, we searched a bit for the right security gate. Now Arlanda is supposed to have four separate terminals for passengers, and our boarding cards said the plane was departing from Terminal 4. For our confusion, it turned out there is a single security checkpoint for all terminals, and the table titled "Terminal 5" at the entrance shows the deptartures for all of them. Anyway, we rested and waited, and ate some sandwiches and salad for dinner. 

The boarding gate for the plane was announced a while later, and we moved over and sat there for a bit more. When the plane had landed, the ground crew started checking in people with priority passes while the former passengers were still leaving the plane, I guess to speed things up, but this just led to confusion and - at least to our eyes - did not do much to alleviate the situation caused by the plane being late.

In the end we boarded safely and were on our way back, landing at about 0:40am and catching a cab home. We were very tired, but I think the trip was very much worth it. 

In the end my Google Maps account says we had walked about 13 kilometers (I don't think it counts the seven different platforms in the Vasa museum we climbed, or the four different exhibits in the Royal Palace) and used public transport for about another 45, which is not a bad achievement in three days' time.