After my adventure to Finland the day before, this was my only full day in the Swedish Capital.
I had some breakfast and then walked down to Brommaplan to catch the train into the city centre. It was snowing quite heavilly so the city looked quite nice (not that it looks bad any other time)! I saw from my guidebook that the changing of the guards took place on Sunday mornings, so I headed to the Palace. It was quite busy, mainly tourists. It was quite interesting to see, lots of music was played and a man was telling everyone about what the various trumpet calls were used for when (If) the Swedish military were ever deployed.
The whole event lasted about an hour an after that I did a bit of walking around the Old town (Gamla Stan). It was a very traditional area, lots of narrow streets and passageways and of course rip off souvenier shops selling ABBA related material and Viking Hats. I bought a Viking figurine for my flatmates (which they very much enjoyed). I got some lunch and headed back to the modern part of the city and had a wander. It was getting quit cold again so after some shopping and visiting a few cafes I had some dinner and headed back to the hotel at around 7pm. I headed back out again for a few hours at 9pm but the snow became pretty heavy so I didn't stay in the city very long in case the trains were called off early. Turns out they weren't as, unsurprisingly in Sweden they can cope with snow and are able to run perfectly well when it happens.
The next morning was my last. I started the day by finally getting time to the use the sauna on the top floor of my hotel. The view wasn't amazing (I was in an industrial/residential suburb) but I could see all the way to Bromma airport, so was able to watch the planes come in and out! I stayed there for about 2 hours as it looked cold outside again!
I eventually decided to head right out of town and got to the Stockholm TV tower. It was quite a long bus journey out there, but once I got there it was very busy with what seemed like most of Russia on holiday. These were the first Russian tourists I'd ever met and they were not very friendly, not did they understand that you had to buy a ticket and not just barge your way onto the lift. There were plenty of signs in Russian so I'm guessing this is quite a common problem at the Stockholm TV tower!
The lift ascended very quickly and pretty soon I was enjoying a view of a very snowy and frozen Stockholm. The sky was clear so I could see pretty far. I spent about an hour at the top, they had a small cafe, which although expensive was pretty good. I headed back into town to do some last minute shopping and then had to head back to get my bag and my bus back to the airport for my flight home.
I just barely made the coach back to the airport as there was some kind of delay on the otherwise perfect Tunelbannen. I got there in the end and had a pretty uneventful journey back to Skavsta.
The airport is tiny, it has, I think 5 gates. 3 are for Schengen flights and 2 are for UK and Ireland flights. A lot of people made their way through to the non-Schengen departure lounge, which was clearly a mistake as there was nothing through there and as you had to go through passport control (which was one way, therefore you left Sweden) there was no way of coming back to get a drink from the very expensive bar, a snack from the very expensive restaurant or some sweets from the extremely expensive newsagent shop. I had the genius idea of taking an empty bottle through security with me and filling it up at the tap in the bathrooms and saved myself almost £2.50.
This airport was tiny, but had some very clever smoking booths. Smoking is also banned in most indoor places in Sweden and airports are no exception. However a private company seems to have supplied these little booths where smokers can sit and have a cigarette and the smoke is just sucked away. There was no smell or drifting smoke at all and they were not an enclosed booth (only had 3 sides) so they were quite a clever invention. UK Airports should take note, might stop a few smokers lighting up in the toilets between flights and long delays and causing smoke alarms to go off!
Once my flight was ready to board I made my way through passport control and joined the line. There were a few people there from my flight out, so I guess they all had the same £26 tickets that I did! The flight was slightly delayed taking off (no idea how, we were the ONLY plane at the airport) but we were soon on our way and out into the darkness. The only lights I saw were Aberdeen and then nothing again until Fife and then the approach into Edinburgh. The flight itself was perfectly smooth and we arrived about 10 minutes early. A short wait for passport control and I was in the car going home about 25 minutes after touching down!
All in all a very good few days away in some new places. I highly recommend Stockholm and the Åland Islands, although they are very expensive places to go. I imagine there is more to do in the summer months as Stockholm is built on several islands which have a whole range of water activities and water based tours going on between them. The Åland Islands are also popular activity holiday destinations for Swedish and Finnish people in the summer months too. It is nice to see Northern Europe in the winter though, even if you do have to wrap up a lot to enjoy it!
Hope you enjoyed my first update, many more to come soon!
Showing posts with label Sweden. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sweden. Show all posts
Saturday, 26 March 2011
Saturday, 19 March 2011
Stockholm (Part 1)
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!
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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