We spent a long weekend exploring Stockholm to celebrate Ryan’s 30th birthday! We took a Friday off work and took a late flight out on Thursday to have a nice long weekend.
Our Friday morning we started by wandering around the neighborhood that our hotel was in called Sodermalm. We started with coffee in a beautiful speckled white mug. The neighborhood was trendy with lots of fun restaurants and shopping. We had meatballs at Meatballs for the People, found an English bookstore, and did some browsing at the shops.
Next up, in the afternoon we headed to Gamla Stan in the Old Town and got a very souvenirs and pictures before heading back to Sodermalm to get some tacos at a hole in the wall Mexican joint called Tacy. For Ryan’s last day in his 20s we were crazy and went to bed early.
Saturday we woke up and had the most fabulous hotel breakfast. I must say there is a huge difference between a US hotel breakfast and Europe.
We then headed to the VASA museum. It is an old ship from 1628 that sank of it’s first voyage. Because it sunk right away it was well preserved at the bottom of the sea and is 98% original in the museum! It was excavated in 1960’s. The pictures aren’t the best, but it was massive being 4 stories tall! Cool to learn all about the history- I highly recommend if you are ever in Stockholm.
After the museum, we headed over to have a fika at Cafe Pascal. Fika is a tradition in Sweden to have a afternoon pastries, most often a cinnamon bun. It comes from the tradition of wanting to invite people over, but not for an entire meal, but for a small snack. The cinnamons were delicious! Not covered in frosting like the US, but tasty none the less.
After our Fika we took a nice boat ride around the archipelago. It was lovely to be in the sunshine out on the water. below are some pictures from our ride.
Next, we wander around the old town, got cake for Ryan, and got some fun pictures in the sunshine before our dinner reservation at Tradition! Dinner was fabulous and I did a great job selecting a fun 30th birthday spot if I do say so myself 💁🏽♀️ They even brought champagne out when we arrived “for our honeymoon”, I think they mixed that up with my birthday note in the reservation, but we took the free champagne😂
For our final day, we took it pretty easy. We had a fabulous hotel breakfast, another Fika (at Kaffeverket), wrote postcards, had a beer at a local brewery (The Old Brewer) and did a bit of shopping. The weather was rainy so we took it nice and easy to end the trip!
Overall, I really enjoyed our trip to Stockholm. It was a very relaxed and peaceful city. Some times we get so many tourists in Amsterdam it is overwhelming so Stockholm was so peaceful in comparison. It seemed like such a livable city! For example, we could walk into some of the best fika and meatball places without a reservation and get seated right away. This isn’t possible in Amsterdam unfortunately.
Until next time,
❤️Melanie
Smiles from Miles Away 