Stockholm on a Friday

Since we're travelling during a busy summer season, hostels and other places to stay have been a bit difficult to find on the short notice that we've tried.  We didn't do much planning on purpose and instead decided to rely on on-the-fly planning.  During our 3 days in Stockholm, we're booked in 3 different hostel, but this is not so bad since we're forced to explore different areas of the city.

After cooking a quick breakfast at the hostel, we checked out and headed to our next hostel for Friday night which was in Gamla Stan (the island containing all the oldest sections of Stockholm). We made a quick stop at the train station to purchase our rail tickets for Oslo on Sunday morning.

We arrived at Friday's hostel at around 11, and check in wasn't until 3, but we were able to store our bags in the hostel's luggage storage area until then. So, with lighter loads, we set out to check out the sights.

The first order of business was to consult with a local on the best sights to see...Jennifer took our map over and sat with the helpful gentleman in the picture below.














We continued down the narrow and winding cobblestone streets lined with rows of shops and flats, it was such a beautiful day and the architecture was absolutely striking, so we both took the opportunity to practice taking pictures with the DSLR camera - here are just a few of our favorites:

The couple of main streets and squares were packed with people from all over the world - we stopped a few times to sit & people watch.

After a few hours on Gamla Stan, we decided to cross the bridge over to Sodermalm. One of the first things we did once crossing the bridge was to go up to the observation deck of the Gondolen tower. This is a free lookout point that is a couple hundred feet above the city & provides really great views.

We walked around Sodermalm for a few hours, until around 6 or 7 pm when it started to cool down significantly. We decided to hop back over to the hostel for a few extra layers of clothing  and for a dinner, then we stayed around Gamla Stan for the rest of the evening.

Here's a picture of the "black and bleu pasta" we crafted, inclusive of swedish meatballs...

We grabbed David's backpack, the camera and a bottle of wine. We were still in the mood to take some pictures and to people watch. Dave snapped these shots.

We sat for a while in a square near the waterfront and a few outdoor cafes (outdoor cafes pop up all over the place in the summer months when everyone flocks outside to enjoy the milder temperatures and the long daylight hours). Jennifer practiced taking pictures next (not nearly as good as David is yet, but I'm still working on learning new tricks)

Jen was particularly excited about learning this trick - intentionally causing the background to appear blurry while the foreground of the image is clear - so here is one photo unrelated to our travels other than that she had the time to learn a photography tip while traveling.

As we made our way back to the hostel, we heard delicate string music coming from one of the narrow streets and walked over to find a solo street performer playing a harp. Quite different than the variety of street musicians that we are accustomed to in New Orleans!

Tomorrow, we head a bit north to a new hostel for our last day and night in Stockholm.

Stockholm

We awoke the next morning on the boat and went up to the buffet room where we had breakfast. They had a large spread of fruit, typical breakfast food, and lunch meats. We ate and also made some sandwiches to have later for lunch.

A few hours later, we arrived in Stockholm. Upon landing, the deboarding process included no customs or declarations, so (in Jennifer's interest of having her passport stamped) we sought out the customs office. Interestingly, there is no passport stamping process in the country of Sweden...

The ferry landed on the south east side of town and our hostel was about 3 mi to the northwest. We enjoyed the walk to the hostel even though it was an overcast day. The city itself is built on 14 islands and that makes for interesting walks since we're traveling along water and over bridges seemingly all the time. The island we docked at was called Soldermalm and we had to cross Gamla Stan (old town) to get to downtown Stockholm and then cross over to Kungsholmen where our hostel was.

We got to the hostel around 11am but they wouldn't let us check in till 3pm so we spent some time relaxing in the area and caught up on emails and blogging. When we were ready to head back out, we stopped by city hall and admired the courtyard there.

Sweden largely transacts in the Swedish Crona (denoted as SEK), as opposed to the Euro, and the exchange rate right now is about $1 to 6.15 SEK.

Heading back towards the city center, we stopped by the train station to learn about bus/train options to our next stop Oslo.  Heading north from the train station to Vasastaden, we walked through some busy streets and along side some nice city parks.

Looping back around to Kungsholmen, we picked up a few munchies and supplies for breakfast before returning to the hostel for some rest.

Helsinki, Day 3

We slept in on Wednesday since it was raining most of the morning.  Before checking out, we fixed some sandwiches to have later for lunch.  The ferry terminal was a few kilometers from the hostel, so we chose to take our bags to the train station closer to the ferry rather than have to backtrack later to pick them back up.  Both of the bags fit in a locker that cost 4€/day.   The northeast section of Helsinki was an area we read about in the guide books, so we made that our destination for the day.  We had 3 hours to walk around before catching the ferry and mapped out a stroll down the main streets of the 'working class' area of the city. Our first stop along the way was the Hakaniemen Market. This was an eclectic 2-story market with vendors selling everything from fresh seafood to pastries to designer clothing to antiques and more. We really enjoyed poking around here for a few minutes.    

We also had our first kebabs here...

After 7 or 8 blocks, we stopped for a cup of coffee at a small cafe. Everyone in Finland drinks coffee, and they drink it regularly throughout the day. Additionally, there coffee is much stronger than coffee we drink in the states - after a couple of weeks of this, it will be tough to get back to drinking Community Coffee! Continuing on, we made Helsinginkatu street our next destination. We read a lot about how this street has many cheap dive bars, food places, and other places of note. One other interesting business that we read about were brothels with names like "Thai Massage"...there were actually several of these establishments across a couple of blocks on Helsinginkatu.

As we continued our walk around, we happened upon a small but quaint park. We relaxed for a few minutes & took a couple of pictures.

At this point we were just about back to the area near the train station and it was almost time to check in for our ferry ride, so we cut through a large park around a lake. There were lots of great walking and biking trails in the park, and no vehicles, which made for a very pleasant walk back to the station.

After grabbing our bags at the station & heading to the Viking terminal, we checked in for our ferry ride and boarded the ship. Our plan was to stay up most of the night, so we booked the cheapest private room available. This was called a C-Class Suite and our room was located on Level 2, which was the lowest level on the boat (just below the garage for cars being ferried across).  We were prepared for much worse, but the room was nearly identical to any interior cabin on an American cruise line.  There was capacity in the room for 4 people and we had a private bathroom.

We dropped our bags off in the room, freshened up a bit, and then checked out the rest of the ship. On board, there were 2 restaurants, a buffet, 2 clubs/bars, a pub, and a duty-free store. It was nearly departure time at this point, so we went out to the top deck on the back of the boat.

After we had fully pulled away from the port and Helsinki was slipping out of sight, we ducked into the duty free store and picked up a few food items and a couple of drinks.

We walked up to the "Sky Bar", which had tables set up and good views out of the windows. We munched on a little cheese and crackers while acting silly and people watching.

The "Fun Club" was on the level below us and contained a small casino (2 tables), a stage, and a band which David adequately described as "a misplaced indy punk band forced to belt out senior-friendly songs to pay the rent". After witnessing someone's grandmother attempting to dance like Beyonce, we decided to return to the Sky Bar to check out the music and dancing scene up there. Unfortunately, karaoke was on tap and the singers were mostly Russian or Asian middle-aged men. As if that wasn't enough, every song was slow and sappy, and the singers were awful. We bounced back and forth between the 2 bars and the pub until around midnight, when we had finally had our fill of mingling with the elderly crowd and we returned to our cabin to crash for the night. While somewhat fun, it was definitely not the experience we expected...

However, morning brings Stockholm & a whole new city to explore!