This time last year I was on the Flygbussarna coach making my way from Stockholm Skavsta Airport to Stockholm City centre. Being over 100km from Stockholm, many might not consider Skavsta as a Stockholm Airport, indeed the Swedish Capital has 2 airports much closer to the city, Arlanda and Bromma, however Skavsta is the cities second largest and the third largest in Sweden all in terms of passenger numbers. Certainly the "classic" European airlines (KLM, British Airways, Lufthansa etc) do not even serve this tiny terminal, it is purely a low cost and holiday airline airport. Ryanair, however do consider it Stockholm (just as they consider the even further away Västerås as Stockholm as well) and the reason I was sitting on that bus was because they got me to Sweden for £26 return (including all taxes and credit card fees). I had a mandatory week off of work (I was working in Smiths at the time and had not taken any holidays and this was the last week I could do so before the year reset and I'd lose them all) and didn't want to spend it in cold and wet Dundee, so instead I went online and looked for some inspiration.
Word of warning: Skavsta Airport is in Nyköping and not the similar sounding Norrköping, which is even further away from Stockholm and also has an airport!
I hadn't been to Sweden for a very long time and had never been to Stockholm, which I had heard being referred to as "The Capital of Scandinavia". I decided to go on my own, mainly because I no longer wish to travel with my family and everyone else I knew was either working or had no money. I had also been on holiday on my own to the US and Canada before so was perfectly capable of keeping myself amused for 3 days. I had the choice of booking a hotel or the youth hostel, both were the same price for 3 nights. I chose the hotel as I guessed that in Sweden in March the hostel would not be busy and I also got a cooked breakfast included in the hotel price, as well as access to a swimming pool and rooftop sauna. The hotel was also in the suburbs a bit so I got to see a bit more of the city and make proper use of my Stockholm Card on the Metro (Tunnelbana).
Anyway, when I first arrived at the airport and got through Immigration, I went to buy a chocolate bar and bottle of water. It cost me almost £4. I handed over the 50 Swedish Krona note that I'd found at home the night before and was quickly told "NO". I had no idea what the lady was talking about, until her fellow shop worker explained that I was trying to use a note that had been withdrawn over 10 years ago. I really hadn't been to Sweden for a long time it seems! I went to the ATM and withdrew some more money, including an almost identical 50Kr note and was able to leave the airport and get on my way to the city.
There was snow everywhere, in fact on my approach to the airport it was snowing heavily and it snowed pretty much the entire journey to Stockholm. The motorway from Skavsta Airport to Stockholm is not that exciting. There are a few retail parks and housing estates, but on the whole it's probably not one of the highlights of my trip. The arrival into Stockholm was nice though. The sun had come out a bit and although it was getting a bit dark (by this time it was about 5pm Swedish time), the city still looked great. We arrived at the Cityterminalen (massive transport interchange) and I qued to get my Stockholm Card to enable me to use the public transport for 3 days. At £20 it wasn't that cheap, but then Sweden isn't a cheap country...at all!
My metro station was Brommaplan, which was quite about 20 minutes out of town and from there I could get a bus to my hotel or walk it in about 10 minutes. I chose the bus to see the route, and when it turned out to be a straight road I just walked from then on. My hotel was nice, although as I had a cheap room, I had no window, but did have a curtain covering...well, a bit of wall, in order to give the impression of a window. It didn't work, I still knew there was no window and I was in pretty much an en-suite box. A comfortable box though, with a TV that had about 200 channels, although at times I wasn't sure if the TV was speaking Norwegian with Swedish subtitles or vice versa as the receptionist told me the TV was mainly a mix of Swedish and Norwegian cable channels. I didn't care anyway, I headed out into the city to get some food!
By the time I got back into the city centre it was dark, but it was still very lbusy. Being winter, it was about -8c. The water in and around the city was frozen, which meant that there were no boat tours going on, but at the same time I didn't mind cos it looked pretty cool (no pun intended)!After wandering around the waterfront area and some of the islands in the city centre for a few hours, I got some dinner from a kind of hot dog cart. The man was very chatty, he'd been a lot of places in the UK with Ryanair, but had not yet made it to Scotland, so was asking me a bit about Edinburgh. He gave me some extra toppings on the hot dog for free too!
At about 9pm I decided to head back to the hotel. I was cold and tired and had to be up early in the morning anyway. I went to a supermarket and got some Swedish choclolates and sweets, and some Mountain Dew! They have abut 10 varieties of Daim bars in Sweden and I think I tried pretty much all of them! I watched some Swedish TV on my return to the room and went to bed around 11.
That's the end of part 1!
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