Pre-Christmas - Stockholm

Just before Christmas Linda and I headed off on a trip around the North of Europe to grab a taste of such places in the thick of their Christmas celebrations.

We started in Stockholm, which we've visited previously but later in the year. This time we turned up just after they'd had some unseasonably cold weather the week before, and Stockholm and Sweden were featuring heavily in the news because of the Wikileaks drama, an attempted terrorist attack, and the Chinese boycotting of the Nobel prize ceremony.

Linda had found us a really nice apartment in the old part of town, just across the river from Gamla Stan which is the real historic heart of Stockholm.

In Stockholm we visited the Christmas Markets in Gamla Stan, which were picture perfect in the old square with snow all around. We learned all about the Tomten (precursors to Santa Clause), and kept warm on Glogg, Saffransbullar, and Pepparkakor (mulled wine, saffron buns, and ginger biscuits).

We also went to Skansen to see the Santa Lucia celebrations in the open air museum. The history of the Santa Lucia tradition seems to be a bit vague, but the modern interpretation is of lots of singing and the crowning of a girl who is elected to play the Lucia role.

We also saw groups of people singing in the streets all around Stockholm, in less formal performances.

At the end of our stay we caught an overnight ferry to Helsinki. At the markets we had bought a salami and cheese, which kept us well fed through our ferry trip and beyond!

Actually the Ferry trip was both fun and weird. Fun because we were catching a ferry through the Swedish Archipeligo and ice towards another icy location, but weird because of the strange captive-audience/b-grade entertainment atmosphere of the ferry.

Sweden - Uppsala and Sigtuna

One of the last things we did while in Sweden was to catch the train up to Uppsala, which is a university town not far from Stockholm.

We spent some time wandering around the town visiting the cathedral and museum, but actually our main point of interest was Gamla Uppsala where there was a number of burial mounds that are up to 2000 years old.

We had fun wandering around the burial grounds and imagining the times of the vikings buried there. Gamla Uppsala was the spiritual and political center of what would become Sweden.

We also had some hot chocolate as it was actually quite cold that day. Fortunately there was a viking themed tea house in the grounds - and we bought a bottle of mead to drink later.

We'd rented a car for the day not only because Gamla Uppsala is a little outside of Uppsala itself, but also because we were keen to visit Sigtuna, which is meant to be the oldest town in Sweden.

We had a very pleasant (although quite slow) drive to Sigtuna which was very quiet by this time, being quite late on Saturday, although we did find the local cafe apparently built in the old post office, apparently also with little regard to building codes as the floor and roof sloped quite dramatically.

We spent more time wandering around the town, visiting ruined churches and spotting menhirs.

After this we returned the car to Uppsala and spent more time wandering around the town and having dinner. We also took some photos of the river flowing through the town since the water was really high - possibly as a consequence of all the melting snow in Springtime Sweden!

Our last day in Sweden was relaxing but a bit frustrating, as we'd planned to leave our bags in the central station to do some last minute wandering and shopping but in the end there was no lockers available for our bags. So we just caught the train to the airport and shopped and ate there instead, and we ended up returning to Switzerland with bags full of souvineers and gastronomic treats. We had a fantastic time in Sweden and I think we were genuinely surprised on a number of levels at how nice it was. We spent our flight home planning future Scandanavian holidays!

Sweden - Kiruna and Abisko

From Stockholm we headed way up north to Kiruna for a few days.

The attraction of Kiruna is that it is above the Arctic circle in Swedish Lapland, and we had a few things in mind that we wanted to do there.

Our first night in Kiruna we stayed in the Ice Hotel, which is a hotel carved out of blocks of ice and the overnight stay is on beds made from blocks of ice and reindeer hide.

There is various types of rooms, ranging from the Art Rooms with elaborately carved decoration, down to the Snow Room which basically just had a bed. Of course the only room we could afford was the Snow Room which was anyway probably a good choice since you only really sleep there and the rooms are otherwise open to the public.

We did a tour of the rooms when they were all open, and drank an obligatory vodka out of ice cups in the Absolut Ice Bar.

Aside from this we mucked around in our 'warm gear' (including giant moon-boots), which was mostly un-needed because of the fine weather but fun to wear regardless, and wandered around the village.

After a night with a glimpse of the Northern Lights and an unexpectedly warm sleep in our Snow Room we visited the Sami village and said hello to some Reindeer, and then had some Reindeer soup (we didn't feel at all conflicted about this).

In the evening we were booked for a Snowmobile Tour, which took us out along the forest paths and over frozen lakes to a wilderness hut where our friendly guide cooked us dinner while we attempted cross country skiing on the lake.

We had a disappointingly cloudy night, so no Northern Lights, but otherwise had a fantastic time. It took some deciding as to whether we should stay another night in the 'Swedish wilderness', but in the end opted to stick with our original plan.

After riding our snow-mobiles back into town we picked up a rental car and drove up north to Abisko national park which is reputedly the best place in Sweden to see the lights, thanks to the surrounding mountains which keep the air clear.

We stayed in a cabin and, that night, we wandered a little away from the lights of the village to wait for the lights to start.

What we saw was just amazing, there is really no way to adequately describe it and the pictures I took could not capture the display.

The lights filled the whole sky and shimmered and snaked their way from one horizon to another. They moved impossibly fast considering their scale, and lasted for much longer than I expected.

Long after we had gone back inside, the lights were still in the sky making a pattern like tiger's stripes.

After this we were completely satisfied by our stay, having seen more than we ever expected, but at the same time we wanted to stay longer in the North of Sweden, having had such a fantastic time there.

The next morning, however, we jumped back in the car and headed back to Kiruna for our booked flight back to Stockholm - running customarily late and only just making it in time as usual.

Sweden - Stockholm

Over Easter Linda and I headed up to Sweden for 10 days. Neither of us had ever been to Scandanavian Europe so this was quite excitingly uknown territory!

We spent most of our time in and around Stockholm, which is a very nice city with plenty of shops, museums, parks, and cafés (with unexpectedly good Italian style coffee!).

On our first day we were lucky with the weather so headed out to Djurgaarden to visit Skansen, which is an open-air museum replicating historic Swedish villages as well as a zoo for Swedish animals.

This was a fantastic way to introduce ourselves to Sweden, and we learned a lot about the country that we would continue to notice through our trip. We also had our first tastes of Swedish food such as Raindeer and Trout!

We visited the Vasamuseet, which houses a naval ship built in the 1600s that sank almost immediately after being launched, thanks to a miscalculation about it's centre of gravity, and as a consequence is very well preserved.

Then we visited the Nordiska museet to learn about the Swedish cultural history.

We also explored the old town of Gamla Stan and visited the Southern island of Södermalm, where there was plenty of interesting shops and streets to visit.

We visited other areas of Stockholm also and, where-ever we were, we had a really fun time in Stockholm!