Martin took Jess and I to Heathrow at 4.15am for our early flight. We had the longest walk in Terminal 2 to our gate and were very surprised when a man changed his mind after presenting his boarding pass. We'd love to know why as he wasn't distressed at all he just said "No, I'm not going". The plane was very empty and Jess slept the whole way. At Stockholm airport we had a 2 hour wait for Kath so ate lunch, bought our train tickets and visited the useless tourist office. Our journey consisted of a bus, a train and then the metro and went very smoothly.
The hostel was cheap but central although we always had these steps to climb at the end of a long day.
I had asked for a room away from the main areas but it was bang next to the communal kitchen. They couldn't move us as the place was full and our misery was compounded by a lack of hot water.
Mirror in our first room!
We went out for a walk to Hornstull where there should have been a Christmas market but it didn't exist. We walked back along the river and had a delicious hot chocolate on a boat looking over the water to the city.
We carried on walking to where there were supposed to be Christmas pop up shops but, again, no sign of them. Thanks Tourist office. Dinner was at a small, hip bar then an early night.
The next morning we were given access to another room for showers but the temperature of the water was just as bad but another, enormous room was given to us right away from the central areas for the rest of our stay. The breakfast was good.
These are left in random places around the city:
We caught a train and bus to Sigtuna which is apparently the oldest town in Sweden. At last a proper Christmas market. It stretched along the main street and we had a lovely leisurely stroll and bought some souvenirs at good prices. We had a stroll along the lakeside and had a baguette and cheese then caught the bus and train back to Stockholm city. It gets dark at 2.50 in winter here which is quite disconcerting as you always think it's later than it is. There are very few coloured Christmas lights adorning the houses - but they all have the candle lights in every window.
When we got back to Stockholm Kath and I skated on the outside rink which was really pretty in a city park. I wasn't very confident so hung on to Kath a lot and finished before the allotted hour was up as my ankles had begun to ache.
We walked slowly back to the hostel stopping in every souvenir type shop and having a quick dinner in a cafe. We were all taken with these;
On Monday we had two walking tours planned; the City tour in the morning and the Old Town tour in the afternoon. However, when we arrived in the Old Town to meet the City tour guide we were advised that they were sick so the tour was cancelled. Therefore we, and many others who had the same plans, had to do the Old Town tour. The guide was good in that she tried to combine parts of both tours.
The most iconic building in the Old Town was covered up during refurbishmemt!
We finished at the Palace but just missed the changing of the guard so we visited the Old Town Christmas market. This was surprisingly absolute rubbish - very few stalls and lots of tat or funfair type games. This was a real disappiontment as it's the only one in the city and I had expected we would visit it several times. I was very relieved that we had journeyed out to Sigtuna.
We spotted that the Nobel museum was today offering free admission - due to the Peace prize being awarded in Norway and there was a live feed from the presentation. The museum was really good. Afterwards we ate a snack lunch at a small table in a supermarket then visited the Culture House. This had a holocaust exhibition but not a lot else despite there being 6 floors of culture advertised. We walked a long way to a food hall which turned out to be like a posh deli but we did find one of the statues I had on my list; a bronze of a lady which is warm to the touch. It was true - her tummy was really warm!
It was really cold throughout our stay and we wrapped up in many layers and had hats and scarves. This meant a great disrobing whenever we went inside then a wrapping up ceremony before venturing out again. It snowed but didn't settle although it seems we had missed a lot of snow.
We found another statue on my list on the way back to the old town - this was a tiny statue and people leave offerings.
Dinner was at a restaurant not far from the hostel. Jess had dinner with her old school friend, Deborah, who is Swedish and lives in the suburbs. Kath and I ate at another table.
On our final day we got up late and packed our bags. We walked along the waterfront to a Gingerbread house exhibition which was held in a funky art museum.
This competition is held every year and open to children, designers/architects and others so there were several categories. The theme was 'luxury'. We had a good look and then voted for one in the people's vote.
After a hot chocolate we visited the new city museum but this was disappointing. There was an interactive children's room which looked interesting but we weren't allowed in. We walked to the main station and had a hot lunch before the train and bus out to the airport where Kath took off 15 minutes after us, both flights on time so we were all home by 9 in the evening.
No comments:
Post a Comment