19th - 29th July 2011
Taking the ferry from Turku in Finland to Stockholm, the Swedish capital, takes 13 hours.
Setting sail at 8:45am we were a little worried that Charlie wouldn’t be able to sit still for 13 hours.
We went prepared, packing an enormous packed lunch in one Bag for Life and Charlie’s bed in another! And the dog was good as gold in the end. As soon as we got settled somewhere we unrolled her duvet and she plonked herself down and watched the world go by.
There are a vast number of islands, islets, and skerries between Finland and Sweden. The ferry snakes its way through them for miles, picking its way through narrow channels, and only being out in open sea for a short time.
First impressions of Stockholm were pretty good, as we drove off the ferry and through the centre in glorious sunshine. It’s a city of islands, grand 19th century neo-classical architecture, and H&M!!
The camping spot for our 3 day visit was a 15 minute walk from the centre along the waterfront – perfect! Stockholm is set on 14 islands so you’re never far from the water, which suited Charlie just fine - although she gave some of the locals a wide berth...
We started exploring in Gamla Stan, the old town, a warren of narrow medieval streets.
The Royal Palace isn’t the most attractive of buildings, but we had a wander around and stopped to watch the changing of the guard.
Sweden’s monarchs are married and crowned at Stockholm’s cathedral, the ‘Storkyrkan’. It’s a surprisingly small place but it houses a fantastic 15th century sculpture of St George and the Dragon, and a very striking silver and black altarpiece.
We visited both of the city’s markets on our travels, and also passed the PUB department store where Gretta Garbo once sold hats!!
Being children of the 80s, we both remember watching the Mary Rose being raised from the depths of Portsmouth Harbour on Blue Peter, so we were keen to visit the Vasamuseet.
The Vasa is a ship which lay in the mud of Stockholm harbour for over 350 years after it sank on its maiden voyage. It didn’t sink in battle; it was just badly designed and rolled over just a few minutes after being launched back in 1628. That’s IKEA flat packs for you!
The building is pretty impressive, but the ship itself is an amazing site and several tiers within the building allow you to get a close up view of different sections of the ship.
The visit inspired us to watch the ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ films. What a mistake!! We gave up half way through the second one after we both fell asleep.
Ask yourself what Sweden is famous for and one of the things you’ll surely think of, after IKEA, is ABBA. So you can imagine our disappointment to find that the ABBA museum still hadn’t opened – despite it being raved about it in our guide book!
We could have taken ourselves on one of the ABBA walking tours, but we’re not interested enough to see where different album covers were photographed, and where Benny once had his hair cut in 1978!!
The tourist office also offers walking tours based on Stig Larson’s ‘Millenium’ trilogy, and many of the place names were certainly familiar to us after reading the books last year.
The Kaknas TV Tower was a 5 minute walk from where we were parked.
One of the highest buildings in Scandinavia, a trip to the top is certainly one of the city’s highlights. We won’t forget seeing the great views as a number of hot air balloons drifted across the city as the sun went down.
Stockholm is a visually stunning city, but it felt a little stayed to us and as though it really needed to let its hair down. But perhaps we didn't spend enough time there 'letting our hair down'!
Our brief trip to Upsalla was perhaps a little ill advised - an hour’s drive in the wrong direction to see a fairly plain town with quite a nice cathedral.
The following week was spent travelling down Sweden’s east coast, and across to Malmo.
There are some lovely towns along this stretch of coast but Kalmar, with its impressive castle and historic centre was certainly a highlight.
The town is particularly significant in Scandinavian history because of the Kalmar Union, a treaty from 1397 which brought Sweden, Norway and Denmark together as a single Kingdom which lasted for over 300 years.
We had a couple of cheap haircuts in picturesque Karlskrona; a good job as Alex was starting to resemble Shaggy from Scooby Doo!
One of the town's best known attractions is the Rosenbom; you raise the beggar’s hat to put a coin in - steps are provided for the vertically challenged!
We had a quick stop at the university town of Lund to look at the magnificent twelfth century Romanesque cathedral, with its astonomical clock.
Our last day in Sweden was spent in Malmo, on a very wet and dreary day. The city is nice enough, but nowhere looks stunning on a day like that does it.
Malmo gave us our last experience of a government run off-licence – it seemed to be the most popular place in town!
The city’s most interesting new building is the Turning Torso skyscraper. The highest building in Scandinavia, it consists of 9 stacked cubes that twist 90° from the base to the top.
It’s fair to say that we didn’t really warm to Sweden in the end. And we’ve found wild camping really quite difficult at times, despite there being some stunning stretches of coast that would be a dream in many other countries.
Another reason for our less than positive experience in Sweden is probably the timing. We’re approaching the end of our 18 month ‘holiday of a lifetime’. Our ferry back to the UK is booked for early September; we’ve been working on our CVs and keeping an eye out for jobs; and we’re having to think about the practicalities of settling back into a ‘normal life’ again.
But let’s not think about that - we’ve still got over a month to go!
In the next episode we enjoy ‘wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen’, and Charlie scares the life out of us by knocking at death’s door... and getting halfway through it....
