We left Ostersund on a high speed train scheduled to arrive in Stockholm in time for a late dinner. Unforunately we hit our first serious travel delay in a long time. Even though it was an inconvenience and our five hour ride took 10 hours and included a bus and another train, I have to give high marks to the Swedish rail service. Though it didn't affect us, several people had connections and I could tell by the announcements and watching what was going on that they had set up hotel rooms, food vouchers and new train tickets the next day for these folks. Maybe the airlines could learn a thing two? When we arrived in Stockholm slighly after midnight, it was cold and raining and the first cabbie at the stand wouldn't take us to our hotel after we'd gotten all loaded up because he said we could walk...30 mintues, in the dark, in the rain, wasn't going to happen. We did get a very friendly cabby who had watched our first cab experience happen and had felt really bad, it was really nice.
Our room at the Hotel Stureplan was awesome. We had gone for one of their contemporary loft rooms instead of a classicly decorated room. It was the perfect antidote to the hassles of the trip even if the minibar was dinner and drinks. The neighborhood is a great place to stay and play as it seemed, to us anyway, to be the heart of the party part of the city.We slept in, skipped breakfast and met up with a couple of colleagues from our corporate office in Stockholm who took us to lunch. Everyone had been telling us that we had to go to the Vasa museum.
We weren't really sure about this, a museum about an old boat, but everyone was so insistent we figured we better check it out. We got ourselves 72 hour mass transit passes, jumped on a bus and headed over. It proved to be an amazing thing to see. The museum houses a 17th century naval war vessel that met an early fate and is extremely well preserved. It was raised from the harbor in 1961. If you only have a couple of hours in Stochkholm I'd put this toward the top of the list. I've never seen anything like it.Then it was back to the hotel to hook up with a former colleague from the States who lives in Stockholm. While waiting for him, we induldged at the hotel bar, Per Lei, with a champagne tasting that was great fun. It was slow at teh bar so we were able to have a long talk with the sommelier who was a very knowledgable and being Swedish, extremely friendly. We didn't have dinner there, but next time I'm back it looks like a nice place for a long, quiet dinner for two.
After hooking up with Babak he took us for a walk through the old part of the city where we hooked up with a friend of his and then went to dinner at a nice Italian restaurant called Sogni, not too far from our hotel. It was here that all the answers to our alcohol in Sweden questions seemed to come together. They don't drink much wine as it was never grown in the country so beer and spirits are the norm.
Almost every place you go has a menu of shots worthy of an American spring break experience. They also don't really have bars, what happens is restaurants, like Sogni, turn into bars after dinner and they stay open well into the night. We also found buying anything other than beer for personal consumption hard too. This is because you have to go to what I would call in America a state store. These stores are open with very limited hours and are rarely located in town centers, which is why we could never successfully get a bottle of wine for the train.
Our last day in Sweden, we were exhausted. It had been a great trip, but we had been on the move the whole time so we slept in again and then just walked around. The Swedes do an amazing job of mixing ancient and contemporary architecture in a pleasing way.We were done touring and just took in the city and the people. It was a fitting end as we spent several hours just rehashing all the ground we had covered and thing we had seen and done and then went back to our hotel room to close all the shades at 11p to hopefully get it dark enough to want to sleep.
