For earlier posts on our trip, start here and go forward from there:

Day 1 and 2: St Louis to Gothenburg

We left off on Stockholm, getting on an overnight ferry to Turku.

We arrived to the ferry terminal earlier than needed, and we did have to check in in person rather than online: I think it was because we had a room on the ferry and needed to show our passports. It’s worth noting that you don’t have to purchase a room on the ferry, but we did, and I got one with a window, though the lowest room in that category.

We finally boarded the ship and found our room quickly. I probably should have taken more pictures, but this is what you get.

There’s a small couch with a bed on each side that folds down. There is also a small bathroom with a shower. We dropped off our things and headed up to the top deck to look around.

We had some great views of Stockholm as the ship left the port.

I’d made a dinner reservation: everybody said the buffet was worth doing, but for some reason on our sailing I was unable to reserve it. We might have been able to walk in, but I worried there were a bunch of tour groups (likely, based on what we saw in check-in) and instead reserved a window table for the restaurant. It did not disappoint!

We had a four course meal for a set price, which was fairly reasonable for this sort of thing, and while we weren’t directly by a window, we were very close and had a terrific view of the front of the ship, the bow. (At first, I was annoyed that we weren’t closer to the window as you pay extra for that, but we quickly realized it was a great table and we really loved the view.)

The servers were friendly and attentive, and we enjoyed a better than expected meal!

One of many desserts involving fresh strawberries we enjoyed during the trip.

We went to bed after that: the beds were surprisingly comfortable! I only wish we could have had more sleep.

Day 12:

One downside of trip: we would arrive in Turku at 7:30 am. I had mistakenly imagined this meant we would roll out of bed around 7 and quickly get ready. No, the ship told us to be ready for housekeeping by 6:30 am and announcements started before that! So I woke up to shower (I had been too tired to do so the night before which would have been smart) and Louie watched through the window as we navigated the Turku Archipelago. We got takeout coffee and croissants from a cafe onboard and waited in our room until it was time to get off the ship: housekeeping did come by to collect the linens but otherwise we were able to sit and wait.

It was a mad house when we got off the ship, but I knew we needed to catch a bus in order to get to our hotel. We didn’t think we would be able to check in, but we wanted to drop off our suitcases first. We lucked out and a bus arrived shortly after we landed (or they just arrive often) and people were loading on. I had researched to learn that buses in Turku could be “tap to pay” which meant you could just tap your card. Louie tried but it didn’t work and the bus driver kept talking to him, but in Finnish which of course we didn’t understand. Finally we realized the reader was broken and he was saying, forget it, just get on the bus and stop holding up the line! So our first bus ride was free.

We got off the bus by Turku Market Square and walked to our hotel from there. It was all very exciting and strange at the same time: here we were in a new country, but we had just spent over a week in Sweden, so things were both similar and different, all at the same time, and we didn’t quite know how they were different. Finnish is definitely a more different language than Swedish. Swedish is a germanic language and so if you know German (or if you have been studying Norwegian on Duolingo for over a year) the grammar makes a lot more sense and you can pick out words that are familiar. Finnish, on the other hand, is really completely different. I did use Duolingo to try to learn some Swedish and Finnish, and really did not learn much of anything useful for Finnish other than learning how to say thank you and learning the word for coffee. The grammar is very complicated and I just found it all very confusing.

In any case, we were staying at the Centro Hotel and found it easily, but it was too early for check in. They offered to store our bags and told us the room would be ready by noon (rather than the advertised 3 pm, so we were thrilled by that.)

What I was most excited to see in Turku was the Luostarinmäki Handicrafts Museum, an open air museum of old buildings, but a specific group of buildings that had NOT been destroyed in the Great Fire of 1827.

Interesting facts about Turku: many things are written in Finnish and Swedish as both are official languages in Finland. It used to be the capital of Finland until the Russians moved the capital to Helsinki in 1812. And it is Finland’s oldest city! Rick Steves did not think Turku was worth a visit, but I can tell you that it absolutely is, and we would happily have stayed two nights, but one was all we had.

The houses in the museum were laid out in the blocks like they had been originally–the buildings are original though things were added to the insides to make a cohesive story and cover many different people and professions. I absolutely adored this museum, though we were on the struggle bus with exhaustion: in addition to having to get up early, we did lose an hour with the time change, and it just felt like jet lag!

Some of the houses had actors in them to answer questions and tell you about how people lived. One was a violinist!

We thoroughly enjoyed visiting the buildings and learning about Finnish history and culture, and I even bought a book about the museum. We probably spent three hours there, including a fika break (which I suppose wasn’t fika as we weren’t in Sweden anymore) but if we hadn’t been so exhausted, we could have spent several more hours. It was terrific.

However, it was time for check in and a nap, so we did that for a bit. The hotel was great, and our hotel was the largest we stayed in the whole trip! After a nap and freshening up, we headed out again and this time to the Sibelius Museum, stopping by the Turku Cathedral on our way. We had a quick buffet lunch at a popular looking place, Unica Kolma on the way, which ended up being seemingly popular with college students and was kind of weird. But it was reasonably cheap and healthy (salads, tofu dish, breads, coffee for around 12 euros) and we didn’t regret it. We didn’t know at the time but we do now: Finns love their lunch buffets. Did I take a picture, no evidently not. No matter how many pictures I take of things, it is never quite enough when I sit down to blog!

We visited the Turku Cathedral, pictured above, and popped in for a bit as well.

The Sibelius Museum was interesting but small. Sibelius wasn’t connected to Turku himself, but a collector of instruments was, so there are some nice displays, some instruments, and evidently a large archive of recordings and books for scholars.

After we finished there we decided to see one more museum and headed to the Aboa Vetus museum, which houses a modern art museum and an archeology museum. We opted for the archeology, and learned about what existed below the museum from the past, which tied in nicely to what we had learned earlier in the day as well.

Our next stop was a concert, part of the Turku Music Festival. It was a singing and kantele concert, lullabies, evidently. The kantele is a traditional Finnish instrument and I thought it would be really neat to hear.

Unfortunately, the concert ended up being more of a lecture recital, and the lecture was…in Finnish! So we didn’t enjoy it as much as we might have, though the music was nice. It was evidently a very interesting and funny lecture, but we missed most of it. Louie was surreptitiously trying to use google translate to translate things which led to some occasional understanding and more often hilarious misunderstandings. The concert took place in an old hospital called the Heideken House, which used to be a maternity hospital, it seemed.

Luckily the concert was just under an hour, and we happily headed to our dinner reservation at Mami.

We enjoyed lovely weather and sitting outside near the river while enjoying some delicious food. Louie and I created our own four course menu by choosing a salad to share, two entrees to share (and asked for them to come out separately) and a dessert. It was a lovely evening and a delicious meal! I know I say that a lot on this blog, but it really was. I don’t recall exactly what we ate: some sort of beet salad, a vegetarian entree, a fish entree, and a dessert with strawberries and other things. It was really quite good–I found quite a few amazing restaurants on this trip, and I would highly recommend all of them.

Day 13:

We slept REALLY well, and woke up the next morning ready to face the day again. Our hotel offered a breakfast, which was very good, though not as good as our Gothenburg hotel breakfast. There were some similarities and some things that seemed unique to Finnish breakfasts. Our plan for the morning was to visit Turku castle, and then check out of the hotel and head to the train station. We caught a bus to the castle (the card reader worked this time, unfortunately, haha!) and got there just before it opened.

We didn’t really have time to see everything at the Castle, but we saw quite a lot and it was all very interesting. We felt fully immersed in the history of Turku at this point, and considered ourselves basically experts by now.

We had to catch a bus back to the hotel, then check out and catch a bus to the train station. The main train station in Turku was under construction (or more specifically, a bridge to the main station) so we had to leave out of a different station, which was easy enough to get to via bus. The station was smaller and had less food options, but we did get a few things to take on the train with us.

And here we are, on the train! We were sad to leave Turku as it was definitely a rushed visit, but we were excited to see Helsinki. The train ride would be around two hours and I was also excited to sit down for that amount of time, haha.

I’ll leave you there for now–next time, Helsinki!

Okay, I’m going to see if I can knock out the rest of our days in Stockholm in one blog post here.

For earlier posts on our trip, start here and go forward from there:

Day 1 and 2: St Louis to Gothenburg

Day 9: Sunday morning we slept in a bit: it’s hard to maintain a sightseeing pace for so long, even though we tried! People recommend taking easier days or taking days off, but we struggled with that because there were so many things we wanted to do! But Sunday we ate some food at the apartment before heading out in the very late morning to see Millesgården. It required a train and a bus to get there as it was on the outskirts, or perhaps more accurately, was in a suburb.

By the time we got to Millesgården we were hungry for lunch, so we at the cafe first. Overall, we found museum cafes to be really tasty and good/easy places to eat.

Carl Milles was a Swedish sculptor, and Millesgården was his home. The museum contains a sculpture garden, the house, another house, and various other things. It’s a great place spend a few hours and get away from the crowds.

Milles was the artist who did the Poseidon statue in Gothenburg, and there was a copy here.

After we finished at the museum, we stopped by a grocery store before catching the bus back. It’s always so much fun visiting grocery stores!

We decided to take the train to Södermalm next as we hadn’t explored that island much at all. We had a coffee and snack, and then walked around just taking it all in. People describe Södermalm as the “trendy” part of town, comparing it to Brooklyn. Those people had not been to Brooklyn as recently as we have, I think.

Eventually, we had a beer at a bar along a busy street. (Vague, I know.) And then decided to get dinner at the recommended Restaurant Pelikan. We didn’t have a reservation so they seated us in the bar area, which didn’t seem as fun (and less busy) as the main restaurant, but we still enjoyed our experience.

I’ve been eating a lot of meatballs for somebody who doesn’t really eat meat, but I had to have a further comparison to the earlier ones! These were delicious as well, possibly better. Louie loved his meal too.

After dinner we walked back to Gamla Stan, stopping along the way at a place where you can ride an elevator up many floors to an overlook.

Day 10: Kayaking Day. For Monday, I booked us on an all day kayaking tour in the Archipelago. People said you needed to get out into the archipelago, and I found a nice kayaking tour where you drive out a bit and then kayak. We met our group in the morning in…Södermalm again. We went with Green Trails. There were 7 of us plus the guide, and we piled into a large van for the drive out first, which took about 30-40 minutes.

We got to the location where the kayaks were stored and started loading up. Louie and I would share a double and chose carefully what to bring with us and what to leave in the van. We all had to carry our kayaks a little ways to the dock to get started. Stevie, our guide, was very helpful and gave us advice and instructions, and before too long, we were off, paddling /kayaking in the Baltic Sea!

Right before getting started.

It was a really nice day. We paddled for awhile, stopping here and there to chat/catch our breath, and finally stopped at what we thought was an island, but actually was attached to the mainland. Nonetheless, it was lovely. We all took a little hike through the woods to a viewpoint, and then back to the water to relax while Stevie prepared lunch for us all.

Louie was brave and went swimming, but I just waded a bit.

After lunch, we packed up the Kayaks again and paddled around some more and finally back to the place we started. It was great fun and a wonderful day! We finished as we started, back in the van, and then back to their store front.

We had dinner reservations at the oldest restaurant in the world, Den Gylene Freden. Or perhaps at least one of the world’s oldest restaurants. I had made reservations in the “Vaults of Old Town” which was their lower level.

First we had to walk around a bit more and explore parts of Gamla Stan we hadn’t seen yet.

The restaurant.

We had a terrific meal. It was traditional food, so of course I wanted to try the meatballs. We had a server who really got us, and was helpful in suggestions and humor. At the end of the meal we wanted to try some Akvavit since it was our last night in Sweden, and he helped us choose ones that we would each like. It was a fun dinner and wonderful end to a great day! I know I say that a lot on the blog here, but it was true. We were having a terrific time.

Day 11: Our last day in Stockholm (and in Sweden). We had to vacate our airbnb, but we were able to leave our luggage in a stairwell, because that evening we were catching a ferry to Finland.

We finished up the breakfast things we had at the place and finished packing up and then headed out for our last day of sightseeing. We walked around the Royal Palace outdoor area first.

We decide to branch out from Swedish food for lunch and had food at Ima Street in Ostermalm. It was delicious!

Then we went to the Swedish History Museum for the rest of the afternoon and learned about, well, the history of Sweden. Vikings, etc. It was a nice museum, and we used the audiotour for much of it, which slowed us down but also gave extra information.

We walked back to Gamla Stan and got one last fika at Cafe Schweizer.

Then we collected our bags and took the bus to the ferry station. We had booked an overnight ferry from Stockholm to Turku, with dinner onboard. We really got there too early: I was feeling stressed about the arrangements and the unknown so we probably left 45 minutes early than needed (or more) and ended up just having to wait at the ferry station, which was not as nice as I imagined it would be. Oh well!

I’ll leave off there for now, and the next blog post will cover the ferry and our time in Turku, Finland, which, by the way, regardless of what Rick Steves said, we found to be a super cool city and really enjoyed. Then again, we were enjoying it all!

Day 1 and 2: St Louis to Gothenburg

Day 3: Shrimp and Salmon Cruise in Gothenburg

Day 4 and 5: Finishing Up in Gothenburg

Day 5 and 6: Starting our time in Stockholm

Day 7: Seeing an Opera at Drottningholm

Day 8 was a busy day! Ever since we went to the Norwegian Folk Museum in Norway the other year, I’ve become obsessed with the idea of open air museums, and this was the first on our itinerary, and also the first one, as in, THE first open air museum. (It should also be noted that I loved going to Sauder Village as a kid which is in the same vein, I suppose.) While crafting our itinerary I decided we should start the day with the nearby Vasa Museum, which everybody said was amazing, but could get crowded, plus it opened earlier.

We started our day with breakfast at Skeppbro Bakeri (again!) because it was good and was also near the ferry we wanted to take to the island of Djurgarden, our destination for the day. You could get there another way, but the ferry was fastest and seemed like fun.

I got the “breakfast buffet” (but imagine that in Swedish, I think they actually just called it frukost) which included a sandwich, pastry, juice, coffee plus yogurt, oatmeal, bread and any toppings you wanted. It was a decent deal, something like 1500 kronor if I recall, while just a sandwich and coffee would set you back 900 kronor. They had a nice sandwich roll with sliced hardboiled egg, mayo type sauce, caviar, and lettuce. We enjoyed watching the sea and the birds, and then finally headed over to the ferry to ride to Djurgarden.

The ferry is part of the regular transportation system so you can use the SJ app to buy tickets.

The ferry arriving for us.

Us, on the ferry. We sat inside because we were tired and it was quite sunny.

The ferry ride was quick and uneventful and then the whole boat got off at Djurgarden, near the amusement park called Gröna Lund. We walked over to the Vasa Museum and went straight in: I had prepurchased tickets online that morning, so we skipped the ticket line, easy peasy. The museum was already pretty crowded at whatever time it was, probably 10 am ish.

The museum is all about this one ship, called the Vasa, which was really elaborate, built in 1628, and capsized pretty much right away, though sadly a lot of people died. The whole thing is tragic and really crazy. In any case though, because of the waters that the ship sank in, it stayed fairly intact for centuries until it was finally raised up in 1961, and then the museum was built in 1990. The museum houses the ship, with lots of displays about the ship, all the parts, information about the people on the ship, etc. It’s quite fascinating, and we spent about 2 hours there…probably could have spent longer, but we felt like we had gotten a fair amount of information at that point and we had made it through most of the exhibits.

In case you were wondering! And yes, you can see them, and yes, they are just boxes without bottoms. Very comforting. (Very demure).

After we had filled our brains with Vasa information, we left to walk to Skansen, nearby. It was oddly hard for us to figure out the best to get there, possibly because there were supposedly a few entrances, but actually more exits than entrances…we found our way eventually and got there around 1 pm, and immediately decided we needed to eat lunch.

We chose Restaurant Gubbhyllan, right near the entrance, and I ordered an interesting potato and herring dish. It was very Swedish and I enjoyed it. After our lunch, we started exploring.

Oh, look, we also had cinnamon rolls! Kanelbullar.

Skansen was somehow closer together than we expected: all the buildings and houses were crammed together in places. It was overwhelming and really terrific all at once. Some of the houses/buildings had people in them dressed up in period clothing who would answer questions and talk about the house and the time. We walked all over, and ended up staying just past 5 pm, when the houses started closing and the people in them leaving.

We found our way out a little after 5, like I said, and we had 7:30 dinner reservations, so we decided to just keep moving.

We walked from Djurgarden to Ostermalm where we stopped in for a snack and a drink at A Bar Called Gemma. It was lovely to sit and we enjoyed our drinks.

We ended the night with dinner and live jazz at the Glenn Miller Cafe. It’s a french restaurant with live jazz, and they really cram you in there, plus it’s quite small to begin with!

We had a lovely dinner with mussels–we actually ended up sitting by a couple who were from Paris and said the food was very good/authentic in their opinion. After we finished dinner the jazz was starting: we enjoyed 3 sets of music by the Dölerud  Johannsen Quintet, with Dan Johannsen (the Swedish version of the name Don Johnson, really, which delighted Louie to no end) on trumpet. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening, a great end to a long and full day.

Notes: you have to reserve for dinner if you want a table, and each set is charged separately: we chose to stay to the end but could have left earlier. They said you needed cash, but we were able to add the set tab to our bill–it was quite reasonable for the live music.

Afterwards, we walked back to Gamla Stan and fell asleep very easily! My feet were killing me and I was exhausted.

22, 543 steps and 9.13 miles walked, but there was a lot of museum style slow walking which can be extra tiring.

Day 1 and 2: St Louis to Gothenburg

Day 3: Shrimp and Salmon Cruise in Gothenburg

Day 4 and 5: Finishing Up in Gothenburg

Day 5 and 6: Starting our time in Stockholm

I’m sorry to say that I’m doing a blog post on only one day again today. I have a ton of pictures to go through, and I think 1 day makes that easier. It does mean drawing this whole thing out for longer, but I hope you are excited to read about my trip for longer! Hey, it beats hearing about my normal life, right? (Don’t answer that, please.)

Okay, on Day 7, we woke up feeling quite refreshed, which was great. We got coffee and breakfast at a place near our airbnb called Cafe Schweizer, and got cinnamon rolls and yogurt with cappuccinos.

They do a lot with freshly squeezed orange juice there as well. We were lucky to get two seats outside, and enjoyed the morning air. It should be noted that we opted to sit outside whenever possible on this trip, because regardless of what the weather was, it was always more pleasant than that weather in St Louis in the summer.

Anyway, today was a big day: we had a boat ride at 1 to Drottningholm Palace, and then we would be seeing an opera there in the evening and getting home close to 11. We decided to do Rick Steve’s Walking Tour of the Gamla Stan in the morning now.

I don’t know if it’s me, or Rick, or Sweden, but in the past I have found Rick Steves’ guidebooks to be invaluable, but for this trip, I found him to be less helpful and frankly, a bit judgmental. I suppose that’s his shtick, and maybe it’s me and as I’ve gotten older I’m less judgmental, but he makes a lot of snide comments about cruise passengers, comments about how the Gamla Stan isn’t the best place to sightsee and YET spend the majority of his book on places there and gives them 3 stars, and various other things. For his section on Estonia he makes a remark about how the guides wash their faces and comb their hair for the walking tours which seems a little bit…implying they are dirty otherwise…and for Finland he completely insults the entire city of Turku calling it a pale shadow of Helsinki, when we found it to be a delightful place and completely different.

In any case, I used a combination of his book, Fodor’s guidebooks, Trip Advisor, Rick Steve’s Forums, Reddit, and general internet searches trying to find blog posts that weren’t entirely click bait and paid for by the tourism industry. But Rick had a nice walking tour of the Gamla Stan and we thought we would do as much as it as we could fit into the time we had this morning.

There were a lot of people. And cruise ships can definitely and do contribute to overcrowding, but so do Rick Steves Guidebooks which leave off entire cities like Gothenburg and Turku. I will say that Sweden is certainly less busy than other places!

I guess that’s what the building looks like! Or would. I asked Louie if we could get a giant drape for our house that looks like our house and he didn’t say no outright.

Also worth noting: it’s funny how there are all of these basically pedestrian only places like the Gamla Stan, but then there will be trucks, or random vehicles driving through. Like that SUV parked there, what’s the deal with that?

The pink church is called Storkyrkan, which means…the big church. It’s right near the big square (Stortorget), so you get a sense of how people named things back in the day.

There are a lot of old organs in the world, and this was a pretty one inside the old Finnish Church.

This is the tiniest statue which is outside the church in its courtyard. I should have gotten a better sense of the scale, but that’s the head of a flower.

I just loved the Gamla Stan: the buildings, the streets, the cobblestones. It is completely unlike St Louis, and I love it.

Various doors.

And then we were back at the Stortorget, and needed more coffee, because of course. We went to a really old coffee house possibly called Grillska Huset Brodbar that was recommended in the walking tour and enjoyed coffee and probably cinnamon rolls, I don’t actually recall (fail!). We did have real coffee from a pot.

The ceilings were very elaborate!

After that it was time to walk to where our boat was taking off, which was right by City Hall. We got there with enough time for Louie to see City Hall (I already had, but I was happy to look again.)

Always look up! You never know what you’ll see on the ceilings.

We chose to take the ferry to Drottningholm Palace since that was how you originally would have gotten there. It was the summer home of the Royal Family, but where they mostly live nowadays.

Various views from the boat.

It was a pleasant ride, just under an hour, and we stayed on the top deck the whole time enjoying the views and the breeze.

Seeing the Palace for the first time!

Anyway, we unloaded ourselves from the boat and headed to the palace to see the inside. We had prepurchased tickets, but it probably wasn’t necessary (and truthfully, we probably could have taken the 2 pm ferry rather than the 1, but whatever.)

We did the tour self-guided, and it was pretty nice to see. I’m sure we missed out on some of the details and intricacies, but we loved seeing the rooms and the art, and the signs were helpful and most of the time there was English to read.

Very fancy bedroom. A bit fancy for my taste, though.

I loved these ceramic fireplaces found throughout and kept noticing them. (I think there were ceramic, if not, then they were made of something else.)

Like I said earlier, be sure to look up! The ceilings often had elaborate paintings on them.

What I would really have wanted to see but wasn’t on the tour: how the Royal Family lives TODAY. Like, how fancy are their regular rooms? But alas, they get that privacy and we only saw historic rooms, basically.

It’s important to have a room full of your accomplishments in battle, paintings, calligraphy, etc.

After finishing the tour, we headed into the grounds and towards another building, the Chinese Pavilion. It was a lovely day, though a bit on the sunny side. The palace and grounds weren’t Versailles but hey, the royal family still exists and didn’t get decapitated, so I’d call it a win.

This was a fun building, full of treasures from China, which was considered a fascinating paradise to the Swedes at this time. Definitely some problematic things by today’s standards, but a cool building.

More fireplaces!

There was a nifty spiral staircase to go upstairs.

Anyway, we headed out after, back to the main area and for an early dinner and coffee/relaxing. Stuff was closing around 5 and the opera was at 7, so we had that amount of time to spent on food and whatnot.

We wanted to eat dinner outside, but it was actually starting to rain, so we went inside instead. We had some soup and shrimp sandwiches and then coffee and a blueberry pie for dessert.

I’d bought these tickets quite a time before, and the cool thing is that we were seeing a really old opera (Armide by Lully) in an old theater building with the original ways to move things around, so it seemed quite fitting. And then after buying tickets I saw that it was going to be in French with Swedish subtitles, and we sort of panicked and worried about it, and then a few days before I looked again and it said Swedish AND English subtitles and we were so relieved! But honestly, we still didn’t always know what was going on, haha. It’s opera!

Edited to add: one time when I looked at the website this was what google translated: “At Drottningholm’s Castle Theatre, clothing is optional, dress in something you feel comfortable in! At premieres, it can be fun to dress up a little extra, but it is not a requirement. Also keep in mind that it gets hot in the salon during hot summer evenings and adjust your clothing accordingly.”

They weren’t wrong. The place was super hot and I sweated profusely throughout, but we did enjoy the opera tremendously. It was well done and just terrific.

We ordered “interval” snacks, and enjoyed some wine and snacks, and then spent too much time trying to find the bathrooms which were farther away than we would have liked, or possibly we missed the closer ones.

In any case, it was a terrific night, and afterwards it was raining a bit, but we found the bus back to Stockholm (the opera had a bus or perhaps more than one you could purchase tickets for that ran directly back to the main station after the show). It was a quick ride and then a short walk home. We debated making another stop that night, but I was sweating and it was humid, and we decided going home was best.

And that was the end of a long and busy day! But we had a great time, and enjoyed almost all of it. Until next time!