stockholm

My friend Alayna and I decided to take advantage of the August 1st holiday in Switzerland and escape the heat for a Nordic adventure in Stockholm, Sweden.We had a very nice extra-long weekend. Our trip started out great with a ride on the luxurious train from the airport to the city center. If you think Swiss trains are nice and clean, you have not experienced the Swedish ones!

After walking 500m from the train station we arrived at our hotel, it was very convenient. We checked in and then went for a walk. The sunset was beautiful on the water. We made it to Gamla Stan (the old town) and found a cute place for dinner. We both had steaks and they were delicious!

 

  

The week we were visiting was Stockholm's pride week and even the buses were decked out for the occasion!

 

We spent the day Thursday walking around the whole city, doing some shopping and taking in the sights.

 

During a brief rainstorm we stopped in a cafe and had some desserts. The cafe was very eclectically decorated, including these old jukeboxes at the tables.

 

Thursday night we met up for drinks with Alayna's friends from Zurich who also happened to be in Stockholm - Olof and Ryan. Olof is Swedish so they had been on vacation visiting his family and he got to answer all of our questions about Sweden. The bar we were at was really cool - on a barge on the water. There was this completely random Jewish pride flag, so we had to get a picture!

 

On Friday, we took a boat to Vaxholm, one of the islands in the Stockholm archipelago. The island was very cute. We had lunch, did some shopping, and watched the boats on the water. The boat ride there and back was also beautiful and we saw a lot of the other islands in the archipelago as well.

 

Friday night we met up again with Olof and Ryan and one of Olof's friends for dinner and a night of drinking. We had a great time, as evidenced by the pictures of the sun rising in the following pictures!

On Saturday morning when we woke up, only one thing would do for lunch---Pizza Hut! As two Americans that have been living with a lack of "American" pizza in Switzerland, we couldn't resist that stuffed-crust goodness!

After stuffing our faces with stuffed crust pizza and fountain diet sodas (with ice - go Sweden!), we walked along the water and found a nice area and layed out and swam in the water. For Sweden, it was very hot and there were a lot of others that were taking advantage of the nice weather too.

A wonderful trip and this was the furthest north that Alayna and I had ever been!