stockholm – Newby to Expert Traveler

Gamla Stan dates back to the 13th Century and was founded when leaders from Sigtuna were having issues with armed bandits and were looking for a more defensible capital. Since the area is a series of islands and islands are easier to defend, it was a great place to build a capital. Now, without those pesky marauding bands of raiders, it makes for a great place to shop, eat and have a drink.

St George and the Dragon Statue commemorating the slaying of a dragon who was extorting villagers. I’m skeptical about the historical accuracy of this story.

Gamla Stan is the old town of Stockholm and consists of the islands of Stadtsholden, Riddarholmen, Helgeandsholmen and Stromsborg. Stadtsholden is the main island and the one that most people associate with Gamla Stan.

A look down Osterlanggatan, a road built on the location of the original east wall of the city.

On our first full day in Stockholm, we made it to the old town fairly early. The streets were mostly empty and some of the shops were still closed, which gave us a fairly calm walk to start the day. We popped in a couple of shops and made our way through town to find a cup of coffee. We managed to find that at Sundberg’s Konditori. We enjoyed the coffee sitting out in the cobblestone plaza. While we were drinking our coffee, however, the streets went from being fairly empty to being pretty packed.

A look down a side street at the belltower on the Stockholm Cathedral, also known as the Great Church.

Quite a few tour groups showed up, who traveled in packs of a dozen or two and tended to stretch all the way across the narrower roads. Tourists and shoppers started to pop up everywhere, but this was only a Thursday, so it probably could’ve been busier.

For the next couple of hours, we checked out a lot of shops while making our way down the crowded cobblestone streets. There were quite a few kitschy shops selling Swedish keepsakes scattered amongst art galleries and jewelry stores. After a while, we decided to go looking for a beer.

Swedish Attitudes towards drinking are A Bit Conservative

Sweden seems to be less comfortable about drinking than most of Europe. They have separate state owned grocery stores to sell any alcoholic beverage over 3.5%. They also apparently frown on drinking mid-week. The drinking age is 18, but you have to be 20 to buy alcohol from a store and restaurants and bars can choose to not serve you until you’re 20, which is interesting. Also, the grocery stores that we visited sold only non-alcoholic beer, a product I have yet to understand.

I mention this because as we were looking around for a beer, I noticed that there didn’t seem to be any Swedish bars, Swedish beers, or frankly any kind authentic Swedish alcohol anywhere. Most of the bars we came across were English, Irish or American, so we decided to stop in at Wirstrom’s Pub, an Irish Pub.

The Cellar Pubs of Stockholm

Wirstrom’s had a pretty nice selection of beers and Jenn ended up getting a nice Belgian Dubbel and I had a English Ale. They were showing a soccer game, and the majority of the clientele were pretty laser focused on that. We were admiring the building, which was lovely and has a really interesting basement where you can have a beer in an old cellar.

This, as it turns out, was not unique to Wirstrom’s. We went to O’Connell’s Irish Pub for lunch where I think everyone but Emma got Fish and Chips. The food was great and I developed a love for mushy peas there, but they also had cellar with a bar in it. That bar wasn’t open at the time, but I got the impression that they use it at night when the bars fill up.

Later on we came across another cellar pub named Kallerbyn. It looked very nice, but we didn’t stick around very long. I believe we picked up a to go coffee there and they let us walk around.

I think if we kept looking, we could’ve found more, It might be fun to do a cellar pub crawl in Stockholm. I mean, fun for me, Jenn couldn’t get out of these cellars fast enough, for some reason they creeped her out.

Narrow Roads and Fika

A lot of our time in Gamla Stan was spent wandering the narrow roads and admiring the architecture. The old stone roads were mostly car free, which made the walks fairly carefree and enjoyable. It was crowded but not so much as to be unbearable.

We did manage to stop in to a coffee shop and experience fika, sort of. Fika is a Swedish tradition of taking a set break during the day and have a small snack, usually something sweet like a cinnamon roll and a cup of coffee. Fika is meant to be a ritual that you spend with your coworkers or friends and it apparently is taken pretty seriously by Swedes as a way to disconnect for a few minutes and take a breather. We just sat down and had a cup of coffee and a cinnamon roll in a crowded coffee shop. I don’t think we did it right. By the way, Swedish cinnamon rolls are amazing, I might have to go back just for those.

Riddarholm Church

Riddarholm Church grabbed my attention right away when we approached the old town. I was fascinated by the beautiful iron spire on top of the belltower.

The church began it’s life as a monastery in the late 13th century. The church itself began to be built almost immediately after the monastery was opened. It became a popular place for Swedish royalty to be buried and there are 17 regents buried in the church. When the protestant reformation happened, the monastery was vacated and the church became a Lutheran church which stopped using the church in 1809. In 1835, a lightning strike destroyed the original spire and was replaced by the beautiful and unique iron spire.

Currently the church is known for being the burial church of the kings, even though Swedish Royalty stopped using the church for burials in 1950.

Riddarholmen Church looks remarkably well preserved.

Personally, I was struck by the contrast of the traditional 13th Century gothic church design mixed with a much more modern iron spire. However, knowing that by the time the iron spire had been added it was no longer being used as a church, that somehow made a little more sense to me. It’s absolutely unique and gorgeous, but unfortunately, we didn’t have tickets, or frankly a lot of time to visit, so we walked around the outside of the church, admired it’s beauty and left.

Reasons to Return to Gamla Stan

There were so many things that we didn’t really make time for in Gamla Stan. There is the Nobel Prize museum and the Royal Palace as well as Parliament. There are a couple of beautiful cathedrals to tour, the house of Nobility and the Bonde Palace. If you really wanted to explore the area to its fullest, I think you would need to devote at least 3 days to it, maybe more. We didn’t have enough time for all of that, but that’s okay with me, since that just gives us an excuse to return and get more of those amazing Swedish cinnamon rolls.

Stockholm was the last of our stops on our 14 days in Europe. We had been averaging around 8-9 miles per day of walking, so having a nice relaxing boat ride was just what our sore feet needed. Many residents here rely on these ferries since Stockholm is built across 14 islands. For visitors, however, it can be a great way to relax and see some of the lesser visited areas of Stockholm.

“God our father on the rainbow” by Carl Milles. This statue is actually a fountain which shoots water out of the end and forms a rainbow shape. Unfortunately, the fountain was turned off for our visit.

The Ferries are Included with SL Card

One of the most amazing benefits of Stockholm’s great public transportation system is the fact that you can ride a number of ferry routes with your SL Card. The SL Card gives a visitor unlimited access to Stockholm’s public transportation system for the period of time that it’s valid. The cards are fairly expensive but the public transportation system in Stockholm is excellent, so it is worth it. The SL Card covers most of the subways, trams and ferries in the city of Stockholm and it’s surrounding areas. Tourists would most likely be looking one of the choices below.

	Cost for Adults 20-64	Cost for Under 20 or Over 64 years old
24 hour pass	165 SEK (about $16 US)	110 SEK (about $11 US)
72 hour pass	330 SEK (about $33 US)	220 SEK (about $22 US)
7 day pass	430 SEK (about $43 US)	290 SEK (about $29 US)
30 day pass	970 SEK (about $97 US)	650 SEK (about $65 US)

more information can be found at the SL website

We bought 4 of the 72 hour passes, 2 adults and 2 children, so we spent around $110 US on the passes. That seemed like a lot, but with the ferries being included in the price, it seemed pretty reasonable. Purchasing the tickets was easy, we just went to the subway station near our hotel and bought it from the attendant who was watching the turnstiles.

If you leave from the Nybroplan terminal, you will see some of the amazing Swedish buildings from the ferry.

There are 4 ferry lines that are covered with the SL card – lines 80, 82, 83, and 89. The maps for where those lines go are located on the SL website.

Most of the tourists seemed to be getting onto route 80 at the Nybroplan terminal, located near Berzelii Park. That is where we chose to get on as well.

Hotel Diplomat near the Nybroplan terminal

The ferries are two levels with the bottom floor being completely covered. Rows of seats face both directions. There are tons of windows, so if you prefer to stay out of the elements this is a great place to sit. The second level is out essentially a deck on the top of the first level and it is a fantastic place to enjoy the beautiful weather that Stockholm often has during the summer. There is a set of stairs on the back of the ferry that provides access to the second deck.

One of Stockholm’s many public transportation ferries

Daytripping on Commuter Lines 80 and 83

The main commuter ferry line was commuter line 80 from Nybroplan to Nacka Strand. That was as far as we went and we returned on the same boat. If you want to continue on the route, you need to get off at Nacka Strand and continue on the route with a different boat. There might be a boat that does the entire route, I just didn’t see it. That being said, as you can see, line 80 covers a large portion of Stockholm.

The first stop from Nybroplan is Allmanna Grand. It is on Djurgarden island which has an amusement park named Grona Lund as well as an open air museum/zoo called Skansen. It is also home to the very popular Vasa Museum, which houses a poorly designed 17th century warship that sunk early into it’s maiden voyage in 1628. It was raised in 1961 and was towed into the museum in 1990. Djurgarden also has ABBA the Museum, which of course is a museum commemorating a Disco group responsible for some of the worst atrocities ever inflicted upon popular music.

Djurgarden is an extremely popular stop and I noticed that a large portion of the people on the ferry got on at Nybroplan and off at Allmanna Grand. We actually used it the next day to get back from a visit to Skansen, even though the tram would’ve been faster, because we enjoyed the ferry so much.

You can also get off at Nacka Strand and get on line 83, which covers a lot more rural islands. Nacka Strand has a handful of restaurants near the terminal which makes it an interesting place to stop, especially if you are using this opportunity to leave line 80 and get onto line 83. Restaurant J looks like a particularly good place to stop for a drink or a bite to eat, as it sits on the dock overlooking the water.

Restaurant J sits right by the Nacka Strand ferry terminal and looks like a great place to stop for a drink. We should’ve stopped!

A full round trip on line 83 takes about 3 hours and could be a great relaxing trip on a beautiful day. Line 83 terminates at Rindo, which is primarily a residential island and has multiple stops along the way. Some of these islands are small and have only a dozen or two houses on them.

Timetables for stops on the ferries can be found at the SL website.

Vaxholm island might be a good stop on a trip like this because there is a decent number of bars and restaurants near the ferry terminal.

We took the much shorter route from Nybroplan to Nacka Strand and back, mainly because we didn’t have all day to devote to a ferry trip. If we were to go back to Stockholm with more than 2 days to really enjoy the city, I definitely would’ve taken advantage of the longer routes. We had a really relaxing time on the ferry and if we had some more time available to get off at some stops and really enjoy the trip, I think we could’ve made a full day of it. Oh well, I guess that gives us a great excuse to return to Stockholm!

Tag: stockholm

Gamla Stan