Goin' Feral One Day At A Time: Stockholm, Sweden

I was lucky to be able to explore Gamla Stan before the tourist arrived - yes it turns out jet lag is good for something.

Gamla Stan

Over the years I've been lucky enough to visit some of the great cities of the world, London, Paris, Singapore and Buenos Aires spring to mind when I think of great cities that I've visited. Now I've got another one to add to my list. Stockholm is another of those cities that I felt immediately at home in, not something that comes easily for someone who generally prefers to be camping on a windswept mountain in the rain on my own rather than hanging out in a city.

Gamla Stan

The locals are incredibly stylish.

It's easy to lose hours exploring all the little nooks and crannies in Gamla Stan.

The light was amazing this morning.

I visited Stockholm on the way up to northern Sweden when I was walking the Kungsleden back in 2019, spending a few days in town while I organised a few last minute details for the walk. I was lucky that my travel agent (who is also a personal friend and knows me well) booked me into the Hilton Hotel at Slussen, this hotel was only a couple of minutes walk from the metro and it proved to be great location from which to branch out an explore the city, either on foot, bus, boat or by train.

I bumped into these guys whilst wandering around Gamla Stan early in the morning.

I'm guessing that I was watching some kind of changing of the guard.

Gamla Stan

Some the streets in Gamla Stan are tiny.

Gamla Stan

My flight arrived into Arlanda fairly in the afternoon and after catching the quick and painless Arlanda Express I was at the hotel less than an hour after touching down. Even better I was able to check into my room straight way. After dropping my gear in my room and grabbing a shower and some clean clothes I set off on my first forays out into Stockholm on foot, managing to check out the local Slussen neighbourhood a little before jet lag caught up with me a bit.

Kungliga Slottet

Riksdagshuset

There was street festival on when I visited Stockholm with lots of music, street art and food.

Next morning I was up and heading out to explore Gamla Stan nice and early. Gamla Stan is the old town and being here early this morning meant that the streets were pretty well deserted. While this area can get very touristy if you are lucky enough to walk the narrow streets without too many other punters about then it's a magic spot. It was pretty easy for me to lose the morning poking around here.

Fishing in Norrström in the centre of Stockholm.

I'm thinking that this is the Stockholm Syndrome bank....maybe.

Nordiska Museet

Djurgårdsbron

Apparently these guys use to be popular.

I enjoy taking these bus tours when I visit a knew city.

This tour even got a little extreme sometimes.

My 24 hour ticket had enough time left on it that I could squeeze in a boat tour the next morning.

Stockholm is even more beautiful when seen from the water I think.

After spending the morning exploring Gamla Stan on foot I decided that it was time to venture a little further afield. On my walk that morning I'd noticed vendors selling tickets to a hop on hop off open topped bus that was doing loops of the city...that sounded like a good afternoons plan. I picked up a combination Bus & Boat ticket from City Sightseeing Stockholm, the 24 hour ticket allowed me to check out the city on the bus this afternoon before exploring on the boat tomorrow. I've somehow misplaced some of my photos from this part of my stay however I spent the next 24 hours on a bit of a cultural binge checking out Vasa Museet and the Fotograpfiska among the many other places.

A scale model of Skansen - this is a must do for first time visitors to Sweden I think.

Skansen is a big open air museum.

I checked out the Baltic Sea Science Centre.

The Baltic Sea Science Centre.

It wouldn't be a Swedish museum without a Volvo.

With my 24 hour pass about to run out I caught the boat over to Djurgården to spend the day checking out Skansen. For anyone out there in blogger land reading this then I want to highly recommend a visit to Skanson if you are lucky enough to ever find yourself in Stockholm. Skanson is a huge open air museum to all things Swedish, there's Indigenous displays, a Nordic Zoo, the Baltic Sea Science Centre along with too many other displays to mention them all. Skanson is big though, you'll need to bring your walking shoes if visiting here, I spent at least five hours walking around here and didn't see everything this place has to offer.

Skansen

After a couple of days playing tourist in Stockhom I spent my last day in town organising some last minute stuff for my Kungsleden walk. If anything my last day was probably more local in that I used the Metro to get around town and visited less touristy shopping areas. Even accounting for the fact that my Swedish is non existent I found navigating my way around on the Metro reasonably strait forward, I picked up a 24 hour pass at the Slussen Station which got me around town today and also has enough time on it to get me to Central Station in the morning where I caught the Arlanda Express out to the airport.

How cool would it be to see a Wolf in the wild?

Skansen

Summertime in Stockholm.

The Dirt.

Ok, the highlights of Stockholm for me were, in order of my enjoyment:-

Exploring Gamla Stan on foot before most of the tourists had woken up.
Spending the best part of the day walking around Skansen.
Checking out the Vasa Museet.
Checking out the Fotografsika.
Checking out the city whilst sitting on my arse by bus and boat.
And finally just being free to wander around talking to, and checking out the impossibly stylish and beautiful locals.

I mentioned it earlier however I'll say it again, Slussen proved to be a great spot to base myself, being close enough to a lot of the major attractions that I could just walk to them. If I needed the Metro then the station was only a couple of minutes from the Hilton, which was where I was staying.

Relevant Posts.

Day 1 of my Kungsleden Walk, 2019.

Abisko to Stockholm on the Night Train, 2019.