We spent only a short week in Stockholm – Sunday morning to Friday afternoon – which is shorter than our usual stay in a place, and we left wishing we had stayed longer.  Stockholm really impressed us as a city.  It’s so well set up with bike paths, walking streets, parks,  waterways and an excellent public transit system.  We stayed a little out of the city in the Hammerby area which made our trips to the tourist spots on public transit quite long, but we enjoyed feeling a bit more like locals and the calmness of the area.  There seemed to be no traffic in the city anywhere, and perhaps that was just because it was the start of the summer holidays, but it was nice to see more people on public transit and bikes than in cars. Another city that Toronto could learn from.

The week seemed especially fast as I also did a quick side trip to Montreal for my new venture (reach out separately for more info on that story!), but even the kids and Steve, who were there for the full week, ran out of time to do everything that we wanted to do.  Here’s a bit of what we were up to.

Museum Mania

It turns out that there are 91 museums in Stockholm and it also turns out that the kids are still not sick of museums.  Apparently they prefer museums to looking at buildings, so we found ourselves in a number of them, and they were actually great. 

My favourite was the ABBA museum with the slogan “Walk in. Dance out”, which turned out to be totally true.  The kids’ favourite museum was the Teckniska (Technology) museum where they had to be dragged out after 4 hours.  We are also big fans of Viking history from a trip years ago to Norway, so we had to stop at the Viking museum, and although it was small, it was excellent.  Surprisingly the combo History and Economics museum was also popular amoung our group and according to Nicholas, we spent way too little time there compared to the ABBA museum.

City Views

The city has endless good vantage points and incredible looking buildings everywhere – so many grand structures and churches.  It’s a very impressive city.  We enjoyed wandering the old city and catching views while transiting on ferries and here are a few of our views.

The Archipelago

The archipelago around Stockholm is about 20,000 islands that border the Baltic sea.  We didn’t really have a sense of its size until we tried to plan a day trip to some of the islands and realized how large the area is.  We spent an afternoon at Vaxholm island which was a 1.5 hour steam-boat ride each way from Stockholm.  While there, we rented kayaks and despite a frightening close encounter with a ferry, it was a good perspective from which to see many quaint cabins and beautiful shoreline. Fun fact: the ABBA couples owned 3 houses on one of the tiny islands and wrote a lot of their songs from there.

Staying Active

The cool weather and beautiful scenery made it easy to get outside and exercise.  Steve and the kids were great at getting out to run almost everyday.  Steve even had us all doing a 5k time trial and I was quite thankful that the course was flat.  Steve and the kids also spent an afternoon at a nearby park self-described as “Adventures for the whole family in the middle of Stockholm” with a grass ski-run, a tubing hill, and more. They didn’t try skiing, but had a blast with the rest of the activities.  The boys of course played the requisite soccer game in a park nearby the hotel – the soccer pitches in the city are amazing. The kids seem to have endless energy and we work hard to keep up.

Up Next

We are excited to have arrived in Germany where we get to spend a week with my amazing sister and brother-in-law.  Lucas and Zachary have been practicing German on Duolingo, so we are ready!