Sweden - Stockholm

Elodie

Nov 16, 20163 min read

General overview

Stockholm is the capital of the Sweden. It covers 14 islands in the Stockholm archipelago (with some 24,000 in all). Water represents 30% of the surface of the city, as are the green spaces. 57 bridges connect the different districts. Stockholm was created in the 13th century (the first mention of the city dates from 1252) to protect Sweden from invasion by foreign fleets from the sea.

The different area

Gamla Stan : the old town, include the Royal Palace

Djurgården : large park and many museums

Södermalm : South of Gamla Stan, is the lively district of the city. Atmosphere bobo, there are stores of retro clothing and crafts and trendy bars.

Östermalm, Skeppsholmen, Norrmalm, Kungsholmen

Currency

Sweden is not in the eurozone. Swedish use Swedish crowns. 1 SEK is worth just over 10 euro cents. For example, a purchase at 234 SEK: we divide by 10 and add a few tens of cents: that makes 23,40 €.

Free Walking Tour

Free guided tours of Stockholm are available. There are three different: City tour, Old town tour, and Söder tour. I do not try so I cannot give you my opinion, but feel free to share your experience !

My trip

I visited Stockholm at the beginning of November with 3 friends. We booked our boat on Viking Line. My advice is to book a night trip ticket and share a cabin because the travel is quite long (12hours on average). So if you book a ticket during the day (15€) you also lose your day. We booked also a hostel called City Lodge. We found it on the site Hostel World. Prices in Sweden, especially Stockholm, are quite high. So the quality of the equipment in the hostel was ok : not really good, not really clean but it was one of the cheapest available hostel we found.

The first day, we went to the royal palace to see the changing of the guard and we walked mostly in the old town which is pretty.

I noticed quite quickly that Stockholm is an expensive city. For instance, I wanted to visit several museums such as ABBA museum but the prices have stopped me. Indeed, to visit ABBA museum it cost 23€. On average, it is 10€ per museum, so it is quickly a budget.

Even if, I wasn't able to visit museums, I'll share with you the list of museums and places I wanted to go : ABBA museum, Vasa museum, Skansen, Fotografiska, Subway, Waldemarsudde, Gamla stan, Djurgraden, Moderna museum, Drottningholms Slottsteater, and Nordic museum.

I visited Stockholm Cathedral. You have to pay to visit (I was really surprised because it was the 1st time I have to pay to come inside a church. For me it is supposed to be free :p). Stockholm Cathedral Parish was formed in 1989 and is responsible for Stockholm Cathedral and the churches of St Clara and St Jacob. It is a parish with few inhabitants (fewer than 3 thousand) and consequently has a weak base for taxation. Although the parih receives grants for its activities from the diocese of Stockholm, they are struggling to solve major financial problems. That's the reason why visitor have to pay a entrance fee.

During this weekend, we saw the first snow of winter ! It was really cold and windy so we did not visit the city that much the second day... Moreover, we were quite tired because the previous day we met an artist called Henrietta Kozica (insta : henriettakozica, kozicaart.se). I pretty like her job. She told us how she works, her life, her contract, etc. She is kind. After that, we had a little "Girl Talk" because we wanted to wake up early, so obviously we spoke all the night x) !