33 Hours in Stockholm

I’m a sucker for a Ryanair sale and when I found flights return from London to Stockholm for £25 I jumped at them and encouraged my friends Ainsley and Lauren to tag along too. The only downside of these flights were that they left at 6am Saturday morning and got home at 11pm on the Sunday evening. This meant a wake up call at 2am to get a taxi to the bus station, a bus to the airport for our bleary eyed flight.

We arrived in Stockholm by 9am and were ready and raring to check out the city. The hostel we stayed at upgraded us to an apartment which mean not only did we get our own kitchen but we also had our own sauna. Tempted to stay in there we headed out to check out the city and we were lucky enough to get a gorgeous sunny day.

Stockholm is made up of many little islands so we wandered down and crossed over a bridge into the old town where we wandered the little streets, found a cafe and grabbed some food. Unfortunately it wasn't Swedish meatballs but a kebab as food in Sweden is expensive! We then decided to go on a boat cruise that sailed us around all the little islands so we could check out a few of the hotspots. After an hour on the boat we disembarked at ‘The Vasa' where we spent an hour or so wandering through the museum about the viking ship that was discovered in the Baltic Sea. It was interesting to see the viking ship, read about the history of the vikings and also the intense recovery of this historic vessel. It was one of the best things we did!

We got used to having our feet firmly on the ground so we decided to wander around the city centre to see what else we could find. It is a shoppers dream with the headquarters of H&M located there so there seems to be one on every corner. By this stage we were starting to fade so it was back to our hostel for a kip before heading out to dinner.

It was hard to get motivated to head out for dinner but we managed to wander through the city and it was really pretty at night time so it was worth getting up for. Once again it was no Swedish food for us and we headed into a Thai restaurant for a delicious meal. Both food and drink is pretty expensive compared to English prices so it is hard to get used to. I guess if you were living and working there and earning the Krona it would be much better as the city seemed to be full of cafes, restaurants, bars and places to hang out.

The next day we signed up for a free walking tour to get a bit of info about the city. Our tour guide was really informative and over the next few hours we wandered through the city and learned about the monuments, buildings and history of Sweden. We were lucky to get another sunny day so after the tour we headed to some flea markets we had stumbled across on the tour. We trawled through the stalls and found a couple of bargains before setting off to visit the Town Hall which is located right on one of the waterways.

We spent the afternoon chilling out by the river, sunning ourselves on the grass, chatting and people watching. It was a great way to pass the afternoon as we waited for our flight. We headed off about 5pm to the airport and i was sad to say goodbye to such an awesome city. I would love to head back there and check it out with a local guide and a bit more cash so I could splurge on Swedish food. 33 hours just isn't enough!