Stockholm, Sweden
By Nate (May 22nd-24th)
Stockholm is a busy, beautiful, scenic, fit, and expensive city. The airport, train station, trains, streets, buildings and parks are all impressive and well kept. The express train ran like a subway. The car we went in had bar stools, wifi, and two ticket people who sat in it at an office desk. It also had a bathroom and nursing/changing station too.
We didn’t see any garbage on the streets, everything looked like it has been taken care of and repaired when needed. It all seemed very well organized with people putting thought and care into their daily lives.
Their daily lives which obviously include lots of exercise. There are so many people in great shape here it is wonderful to see. The reason seems pretty simple – people bike, jog and train on a regular basis. Many European cities have a lot of walkers but Stockholm and Amsterdam have a lot more cyclers. The difference between the two that we noticed is there are a lot of smokers in Amsterdam but there also was a lot more tourists who might have brought the smoking numbers up.
Stockholm is made up of a series of islands (called an archipelago) that makes for a beautiful, scenic city. We stayed in the old town so we got to see the cobblestone paths (many were pedestrian only), old buildings, beautiful waterfront and many cool shops and restaurants.
We did find it very expensive overall. We have found groceries in Europe to be more expensive than Canada in general by 10-15% and in Sweden all things would be another 10-15% on top of that. So a beautiful place to live but an expensive one.
So needless to say we tried to keep our spending down as much as possible. Also since it was the end of our trip and we have spent a ton of money already, it has weighed on me a little more than usual.
We found a little turf pitch close to the place we were staying and we played soccer there a bunch with the local kids. It was a good time and the boys held their own. Some of the Swedish kids were more skilled but the O’Neill boys out hustled them.
My favorite place we went was the Vasa Museum. What an incredible place. They pulled a famous shipwreck out of the bay after 300 years and hauled it to shore. Then they built a massive museum around it. The ship was preserved by the silt at the bottom of the bay and they restored much of it.
There is a great video explaining how the ship sank less than 1 km from its starting point. It was built too high and too narrow. The wind blew it over. The museum has a different floor for each topic such as life on the ship, building practices, royal family, war in the area, kings influence on decision making, etc.
There was also a temporary Lego display of 7 famous ships and shipwrecks (including the Vasa, Titanic, the East Indiaman Batavia and HMS Pandora).
It also talked about a cargo ship in 1997 which had a few containers fall off of it. One container was carrying 4.8 million pieces of LEGO. Pieces of LEGO are still being found between Ireland and England.
In 2014, the shipwreck of HMS Erebus was discovered by Parks Canada in collaboration with Inuit communities.
This kept all of us entertained for an hour easily. We then toured the museum for another 2 hours and could have stayed longer but we were cognisant of the limited time we had in the city. This would be my top suggestion for anyone coming to the city. It is also on an island so we took a ferry over to see the views from the water.
One thing to note – since it is May the daylight lasts a lot longer than we are used to in Canada. The first night I went to bed at 10:30 when it was still light out. I woke up at 4:15 and it was light out. It made it hard for all of us to follow our regular sleeping habits, mostly with waking up in the morning. Some of us wear eye masks.
My mom joined us at the Stockholm airport which was a wonderful moment. The kids were so excited to see her and had been talking about it for days. She kept the kids entertained so Torie and I had some time out with just each other which was very nice as we haven’t had this opportunity too much with our travels.
Looks and sounds amazing. So glad your mom could be there to enjoy some of your wonderful adventures.
Really a cool place.