I arrived in Stockholm around 11:40 am on Sunday. Luckily I found the local convenience store in the train station and picked up a 72 hour travel pass. It allows unlimited travel by train, subway, bus, or ferry within Stockholm which for me is a blessing for a tourist who is not completely familiar with the layout of Stockholm. I had my first subway experience out to Kungsholmen where my youth hostel was; it is an island to the west of the main part of Stockholm (Norrmalm). I ended up walking around for a half hour, at one point even walking past the hostel without noticing it. I guess I missed the glaring red sign saying HOSTEL right above me.

The hostel certainly was new, but the hospitality was certainly lacking. They charged 20 SEK just for storing my luggage and breakfast was 60 SEK. Then there was of course the community kitchen, to use a fridge cost 20 SEK, so that made buying my own breakfast prohibitively expensive. However, in the end it really did not make a whole lot of difference because the rest of Stockholm was a lot of fun. For lunch, I stopped at Lind?s Caf? and had a pretty good lunch. For a starter I had some toast with a spread that consisted of Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer, as well as some onions and horseradish and mayo. It was surprisingly good. For the main course I had a steak with pretty good mushroom sauce. Since it was my waitress who initially helped me find my hostel, I left a nice tip.

After lunch, I took the metro (subway, but in Stockholm it is the T-bana) to Gamla Stan. It is part of the ?Old Town? and so there were some very tight winding cobblestone roads to walk through with plenty of shops. The shops are all pretty small and so window shopping is a lot of fun. The amount of people walking down the streets was amazing; it really made the city feel so vibrant. There was a square with a bunch of very touristy goods and was near the Nobel Museum. The museum was interesting, but way overpriced for the value. After the museum it was about 4:30 and was already very dark, so I decided to head back for the evening. When I took the subway back, I was still so amazed about the pace in Stockholm, everything is so fast, I think the pace of life at times is much faster than it is in Tucson, there are always people rushing from one subway track to the next.

The next morning I got up and finished preparing for the things I wanted to do when it got light. The breakfast was not all that spectacular. I seem to be adjusting to the Swedish breakfast of cereal and with some bread with meat and cheese on it. After breakfast, I picked up some band-aids for my blisters. My last band-aids required scissors to cut and with no scissor I was forced to do some butchering with a knife in the hostel kitchen (which did not really work). The grocery store did not have a knee brace and the pharmacy across the street from the grocery store did not open until 10 am. With the sun setting so early, I could not afford to wait, so I decided to just ?suck it up? for the day.

I stopped first at the train station to pick up my train ticket for Copenhagen. I found a pretty good deal for the 6:20 train which for me works great because that way I could get to the station and beat out rush hour. Afterwards, I went back to Gamla Stan to get some pictures that I was not able to get when it was dark out. There is very interesting church called Storkrykran near the royal palace with brick columns. Evidently people consider it Stockholm?s cathedral. The palace itself is closed on Mondays and it was not all that spectacular on the outside, but the size was certainly impressive.

I eventually found my way to Djurg?rden (pronounced Yoor-Gorden) which is pretty much an island forest. However it has some very cool museums. One of the museums, the Nordiska Mus?et, documented Swedish society throughout the 19th through 21st century (and some of it older). It had some interested things on the indigenous people (S?mi) of the Northern Scandinavian areas and it seems to me that the interaction between them and modern society has not always been perfect. After that, I stopped at the Vasamus?et. This is a museum that houses the warship Vasa that sunk in 1628 on its maiden voyage in Stockholm Harbor. Supposedly faulty engineering was to blame for it capsizing after a gust of wind. The brackish waters kept it very well preserved, and the carvings were amazing, though a bit hard to see in pictures due to the poor lighting.

After the museums, I walked around the park for a while. I originally wanted to see a museum that had some painting from Edvard Munch, but some poor directions from the information kiosk at the Vasamus?et and a change in bus routes due to construction left me to miss the museum. However the walk was great. The houses in the area were very nice, but I suppose one has to have a lot of money to have a lot of property in Stockholm. I walked around for a while until I found a bus stop that would lead me back to the central station. When I got there I decided to just walk down the shopping district for a bit. I found a couple of clothing stores with some very nice clothing, but if the dollar was stronger, I would definitely have picked some up. It actually seems that clothing in Stockholm, even trendy does not seem to be very expensive (at least for the natives ).
I found a Turkish restaurant for dinner that had a great special on lasagna. I picked some Falcon beer and a starter of dolmades. The reason that I tried the lasagna was that I was particularly interested on how a Turkish restaurant in Sweden would make a dinner that is Italian. Ultimately it was good, but nothing like lasagna in the United States, it was much more like a meat loaf. In the end, I think I am very happy that I went to Stockholm. While I really liked Lund, Stockholm by far made the entire trip worthwhile. It just would not have had the same charm had I stayed in the Sk?ne. I?m writing this as I am going down to Copenhagen, so it has a high bar to surpass at this point. However it will be about 15 degrees warmer and now I picked up a knee brace which should make walking a lot less painful. Of course I will go see the statue of the Little Mermaid, no trip to Copenhagen would be complete without it.

-Trevor

P.S. I saw a guy at the train station with the same North Face backpack as I have, but maybe I should not be surprised because it really is a great bag. So as a quick review, it is very comfortable to walk around town with it carrying around all of luggage (knee pain aside).