Shivering in Stockholm

Some sleek Swedish design

Clockwise from top left: View of the Old Town; The Town Hall; The charming streets of the Old Town

We were very fortunate to reunite with Andrew and Rachel for a long weekend in Stockholm. We had the trip booked in for some time, and Andrew and Rachel were having so much fun on their travels that they decided to nip up to Sweden and join us. It was a win win all round.

We had a fairly low key and chilled out (pun intended) few days of…
> Exploring the beautiful old town and browsing through the classically Swedish shops

> Sipping mulled wine at the Christmas market

> Strolling through the Skansen Open Air museum. Skansen is basically a recreated town that illustrates the different social conditions in which people lived in Sweden between the 16th century and the first half of the 20th century.

> Touring the City Hall – the site of the Nobel Prize banquet and after party

> Checking out the Royal Palace – Europe’s largest with over 600 rooms

Throughout all of this, there were two recurring themes that ran through the whole weekend…

1) It was flipping cold…sight seeing in 0 degrees Celsius is pretty hard work. There were many times that the cumulative warmth of beanies, scalves, thermal tops, long sleeve shirts, hoodies, heavy winter jackets, thermal bottoms, thick jeans, thick socks and gloves just didn’t cut it.

2) It was flipping expensive…we were well prepared and forewarned of this fact, but it is still a shock to see that a meal out is literally twice the price of eating in London (which in itself isn’t cheap). Not to worry....pancakes cooked at the hostel using ingredients found in the kitchen were a good way around this!