Stockholm - Fave City so Far!!

As per usual we only had one full day here in Stockholm so we had to super organised to fit in everything there is to see is this amazingly gorgeous city. I have to say that i was really only coming to Stockholm as a stop on the way to visit another of Dave's trainees, but this really has turned out to be my favourite city so far. I cant wait for you to see the photos, although I'm sure they wont do the place justice.

We had a buffet breakfast included in our hotel charge so we got up to a full spread of eggs (soft boiled, hard boiled or scrambled), bacon, fruit, cereal, smoothies, juices, tea, coffee and a waffle making machine!!! it was the perfect way to start the day!! several coffees later we headed out to see what Stockholm had to offer.

First stop was Kungliga Slottet, the royal castle, which was built in 1697 after the first castle built on the site was burnt down. It took 57 years to complete so they either had council workers doing the work, or else lots of breaks must have been taken!! It does have 608 rooms though so it is quite large!! In fact it is the worlds largest royal castle still used for its original purpose!!

Next we went to Storkyrkan, which is a cathedral where Sweden's monarch used to be crowned. It was built in 1306 and inside features the most amazing architecture, paintings and sculptures as well as many royal crypts, this really left us with no where to walk except all over royals of the past!! The alter is over 350 years old and made of silver while the pulpit is the most extravagant i have ever seen (and i have seen a lot of European cathedrals!!) and was built in the 1700's. All in all it was very impressive but i don't know if our photo's will turn out as it was really dark, but we have some postcards anyway.

After the cathedral we wandered through the Gamlastan, which is the old town. It was the best part of the city with really old buildings really showing how different Sweden is from many other European cities. We were ready for coffee by this time so we found a little cafe which lead us down a flight of stairs into the cellar section (converted into a cafe of course!) but it was dim, lit only by candles and felt very Swedish! Our coffee came in soup bowl size mugs, although i don't think they were mugs as they had no handles, come to think of it, they probably were just soup bowls!! We also discovered that here in Sweden they don't put chocolate powder on cappuccino's. they put cinnamon on instead - learnt that the hard way!! Evidently, I'm not a huge fan of cinnamon!!

We headed along the river up towards a lookout point. We hunted around for a way up for free (Lonely Planet told us there was a free way!!) but failed to find it, so we paid to go up in the lift and got an amazing view of the city from 38 m up. This probably doesn't sound very high, but it was actually on the side of a hill almost so it was high enough to get a fantastic view. I was a bit worried as the lift seemed really old (in fact it was built in 1936 so it was old!) but then i learnt that this lift actually replaced the last lift which was from 1881, so then i though maybe it wasn't so old after all!!! The lift took us up onto a bridge, and then at the other end we found the free way up was actually a massive amount of stairs!!

We walked off the other end of the bridge but instead of going down the stairs (the lift fee was one way!!) we walked onto the top of the hill and found an outdoor ice skating rink and another neighbourhood to investigate. It was getting dark by this time (it was 3pm after all!!) so we walked back up to the bridge on the lookout for a night time view of the city. It looked amazing, all lit up and with a lot of Xmas lights still up.

We went down the (free) stairs and headed back through the old town, stopping to take a photo of the largest Xmas tree in Stockholm!! We then went shopping in the city centre, at Sture Gallerian, which is like an up market Westfield with lots of designers (i bought some cool new sunnies by Stella McCartney!) and along the Biblioteksgatan which is a shopping mall which has a red carpet going down the middle!! Dave got some cool new Diesel stuff in their sales so he was pretty stoked as well!!

Then we headed back to the hotel, grabbing a traditional Swedish hot dog form a street vendor along the way!! We were meeting up with Gunnar (the trainee from Dave's parents place) for dinner and so grabbed a drink while we waited for him to arrive.

We got to the restaurant for dinner at around 8:30 after a quick trip on the metro and Gunnar getting us lost a couple of times!!! We had some fabulous Indian food, not some actually, a lot of fabulous Indian food. After dinner we went for a walk up to the top of Skinnarviksparken which is another lookout, but much higher and from a different angle to the one we went to during the day. The view from here was spectacular, but it was also freezing!! We were able to see all the sights we had visited during the day from this point and it was good to see just how much we managed to fit in!!

Then it was time to head back to the hotel to pack and get ready for our long drive out to Edsbyn (about 3 hours) where we were staying with his family for the next 2 nights.