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

Day 1 and 2: St Louis to Gothenburg

So! We left off on a train from Turku to Helsinki. I forgot to mention one sort of funny/strange thing that happened on the way to the Turku train station–we got on the bus and then at one stop the bus doors got stuck open for several minutes. The bus driver tried a variety of techniques to get them closed, and finally she got it done. No one else besides us seemed even remotely interested in the process, which led me to believe that either Finns have really great poker faces or that it is a common occurrence.

Anyway! Our train to Helsinki was uneventful: we ate little cheese on rye sandwiches. We got to the train station in Helsinki and stopped for an espresso near the station and then walked to our airbnb. It was about a 15-20 minute walk, but pleasant enough. Louie did find navigating in Helsinki to be a little more confusing than other cities: there were more roundabouts and streets going at more angles. The city was full of life, lots of trams, people walking, cars, buildings (some much more modern than we had been seeing), etc.

Our airbnb was terrific.

I took those pictures to share with you from the listing. It was a great place on a second floor, with plenty of space in the apartment and the bathroom, plus a large kitchen! The apartment is right near a tram stop and was easy to find (and a great location in the Kamppi neighborhood.)

Our first night in Helsinki wasn’t going to be relaxing though (if you thought that, you would be new to this blog) and so we set off for a concert at the Musiikkitalo which was part of the Helsinki Festival: the Orchestra of the Finnish National Orchestra conducted by Hannu Lintu. We walked there from the airbnb and enjoyed a nice walk, though I was hungry and we were sort of looking for a cafe. We ended up eating a nice snack at the concert hall, some sort of sandwiches with sparkling water (my addiction) and then found our seats.

I hope nobody is afraid of heights, hahahahahaha. The bars were very sturdy though and fairly close set.

Program:

The Orchestra of the FNO, Hannu Lintu & Karita Mattila
Sofia Gubaidulina: The Wrath of God
Ludwig van Beethoven: Ah! Perfido! op. 65
Richard Wagner: Liebestod from the opera Tristan und Isolde
Aleksandr Scriabin: The Poem of Ecstasy

The hall was really modern looking, with zig zag aisles and seats on all sides. We thoroughly enjoyed the concert and then went for dinner afterwards. We found a mexican place that ended up being terrific. It was named Taqueria El Rey, and I had the cactus tacos with a hibiscus margarita.

By this point in the trip we were both exhausted, both for the day and for the weeks. We did sort of wish we could take a day off from traveling, but everything we did was so much fun and so interesting that it was hard to want to actually stop and take time, but we did find that stopping for fika (that’s the Swedish idea of coffee and pastries) was a good compromise, rather than spending too much time at home sleeping in, etc. We did go to bed right after this dinner though, and mostly maintained a fairly early bedtime of 10-11 pm. We also weren’t walking “as much” and seemed to be averaging 16000-18000 steps rather than than over 20000. So still quite a lot, but settling into a slightly “lazier” routine.

Day 14: Helskini Architecture Tour and Grön

I booked an architecture walking tour for us this morning. I had read that the architecture in Helsinki was more different than other places we were going and wanted to learn more about it, so I thought the tour would be a great way to do so. It was run by Ataman Tours and I would highly recommend it if you are interested in a small group tour that is really informative.

But first, coffee! We did have coffee at “home” but we wanted food too, and found both at a nearby coffeeshop called Kulma Kahvila 48. It seemed to popular with nearby construction workers as well, and we both got a coffee and a pulla (basically seemed to be a generic term for a pastry) for just a few euros.

After eating we walked to the meeting point for the tour, enjoying the views along the way. It’s quite fun noticing the different buildings and stores and businesses.

It was easy to meet up with Emet (the guide) and the other members of our walking tour–just two other people besides us and the guide. We started in the main square and then visited the University library, various buildings along the Esplanade, including a bookstore, and then ended at the Oodi Library.

That’s Emet talking in the photo. He was incredibly knowledgeable yet made it approachable and interesting. This is the library at the University of Helsinki, very fascinating architecture.

These are the buildings along the Esplanade.

In addition to learning about architecture, we learned a lot about the history and culture of Helsinki. One particular fascinating thing we learned was that all buildings are fully renovated as needed to keep up on codes, environmental things, and keep them in good shape. This is why so many buildings were under construction–they must be! Buildings aren’t allowed to be run down, the owners of apartments must chip in and do renovations, even moving out for 6-12 months while it is happening, but as a result the buildings stay in better shape, have the latest fire and safety codes, and use energy efficient systems and have modern conveniences. If there are historical features of significance they must be maintained, however. This is probably more complex and controversial than we were told about, but fascinating nonetheless!

The Academic Bookstore designed by Aarvo Aalti, a well known Finnish architect. It was a really cool building!

The library was fascinating: the architecture was terrific, I just didn’t get any good photos, so google it. It is far more than what you might think of as a library. This picture above shows the musical instruments you can borrow. There were rooms to use for meetings that anyone can reserve, recording studios, practice spaces, 3-d printers, all kinds of machines to use, places to just sit and hang, clubs to join on almost any subject or hobby you might have, and a full cafe and restaurant.

Our tour ended at the library and we said our thanks for a great morning. It was really a good one, and we learned so much more about Finland than we might have otherwise. Emet had said he often ate lunch at the library cafe, so we decided to do the same. It was a buffet (surprise!) and was good enough. There was a really nice beet soup, even though I ended up spilling it on the buffet line by accident…oops!

After lunch we did more walking! I wanted to visit the Moomin shop and a grocery store, so we did a little shopping and then headed back to the Esplanade (which is a lovely street with a park down the middle, I should go back and add that but I’ll just leave it here instead) and then we ended up by the water and checked out the scene there as well.

The grocery store had a large display of salty licorice, so Louie bought a few things.

We had dinner reservations at a restaurant called Grön. My sister Carrie had recommended it, saying it had been the best meal she had ever eaten in her life, so I thought, well we have to go. It was super close to our airbnb as well, so it seemed like fate.

The reservation said to not arrive early or late, so after we relaxed at the airbnb for a little bit and got cleaned up and packed for the next day’s adventures, we headed out as precisely as we could. We got there just at 8 pm, and waited in a short line to be seated.

The meal was really great! All of the restaurant was seated at 8 and we all got the same courses. It was a very different vibe than Punk Royale, haha, and was in fact a place that Punk Royale was “punking” on, but it was great food and a lovely evening. The restaurant was very quiet and at one point Louie joked that actually nobody was allowed to talk. We were especially tickled by the fact that the silverware was in a drawer inside the edge of the table, and we didn’t realize that until after a few course. We ended up having silverware left over and must have done something a little bit wrong, and then I used a steak knife on my dessert instead. It was a bit of an inside joke, but I can’t explain it very well here! I’ll try though: we realized that should have used slightly more silverware for some courses and had taken it too literally at one point to mean that each course required one utensil. We had a spoon with a dessert and I kept having issues so I thought, aha, I’ll grab this extra steak knife to push food onto the spoon, which worked surprisingly well. As the server took the plates away, she laughed and said “classic silverware choice”. Louie wanted to do something like that again for the next course, but we FORGOT! and ended up leaving the remaining extra silverware in our drawers, sadly. He did say it was his biggest regret of the trip, not using all the silverware for another joke.

Notice there isn’t any silverware on the table–this is before we even knew about the drawers.

And…dessert. Everything in between was good too.

Then we headed back…the next day would be an early start, and we were likely already behind on sleep. Such was the trip at this point, full of delicious food, light on sleep!

Day 1 and 2: St Louis to Gothenburg

Day 3: Shrimp and Salmon Cruise in Gothenburg

Day 4 and 5: Finishing Up in Gothenburg

Present day: It was the first week back teaching and first week of school at Wash U, so things have been hectic! And hot, highs in the high 90’s…I so miss the Nordic weather…

Trip: We left off on the train from Gothenburg to Stockholm, I believe. The ride went by quickly and we were in Stockholm around 4:30, which seemed like rush hour or at least the beginning of it. The train station was much busier than Gothenburg and the walk from the station to our Airbnb on Gamla Stan was also busy. We definitely felt like we were in a bigger city! It was about a 15-20 minute walk and wasn’t too bad, except of course rolling little suitcases over the cobblestones is loud and annoying.

Our host had given excellent directions for how to get into our airbnb. That’s Louie, unlocking the door for the first time, I think.

Some pictures from the listing, which was pretty accurate. It was a studio apartment on the first floor, on a little street right near the main square, Stortorget. We found it to be a great place to stay and would recommend it! Anyway, we got cleaned up a bit and found our way around the place, and then it was time to head out for our dinner reservation.

We had made a reservation at Punk Royale for dinner. I have been trying to figure out how to tell you about it, because it was one of the craziest and most unique dining experiences of my life. They say that they challenge the norms and rules of dining, and that they did. It is a set price (not cheap, but we wanted to pay for experiences on this trip) and includes food and drinks.

Punk Royale was on the island of Sodermalm, near Gamla Stan. The thing to know about Stockholm is that it is made of a bunch of islands, so there are little bridges every where to get from place to place, and there is a lot of water. Pedestrians are everywhere, and walking was often the best way to get places.

It was a nice walk to the restaurant: about 25 minutes I think, but we allowed extra time for picture stops and getting lost.

Once we arrived, they showed us to our table and requested we give them our phones for safekeeping during the dinner. The restaurant looked dingy and run down inside, and our table was squeezed between two other tables. We were seated between couples speaking Swedish to each other and felt a little bit nervous! But suddenly the meal started, dishes and drinks were served. They would bring things out and loudly announce the dish. Drinks were flowing and everybody started talking to people at other tables (and lucky for us the other couples spoke terrific English!). At one point they gave us a rubber glove to pick up our food with, another time they told us to hold out our hands and they squeezed a large glob of caviar onto it. There was loud music and a smoke machine which was usually liberally! One course they scooped into our mouths, and another we were led into the kitchen to eat and the drink was in a large plastic syringe to squeeze into our mouths (some sort of sweet liquor, lovely.). The food was excellent and interesting, and each dish they basically yelled at us in English, which sometimes we would ask our fellow diners to repeat. It was CRAZY and we had the best time.

At one point we felt it was important to tell the other people near us that although we were from the United States, we did not like Trump. This made them feel much more relaxed with us, haha. No, seriously, they all thought he was a lunatic and didn’t understand the appeal. It was also great fun to chat with these two couples from Sweden-both were from north of Stockholm and it was interesting to learn about their lives.

At the end of the meal they gave us our phones back (of course), and we took a few quick pictures.

That’s Louie, being shocked by the bill, haha. But it was a night to remember!

We walked basically downhill back to our airbnb, exhausted.

The next morning I had booked us on an introductory bike tour around Stockholm with Philip’s Bike Tours. We decided to get food on the walk around at a place near the meeting point called Komet Cafe Stockholm. They had terrific pastries and coffee, but Louie decided he wasn’t feeling up to the bike tour and I did it on my own.

That’s Philip in the beret. He was a personable and interesting guide, very nice and helpful. We rode all over Stockholm, mostly on bike lanes from island to island and stopped for pictures and commentary many times. There were several women on the tour on their own as well, in addition to a few smaller groups together. I think we were about 12 people.

City Hall, a really spectacular building. Truthfully, my photos from the tour weren’t the best. I was often hurrying to get the snap, and the sun was very bright, but I really enjoyed the tour. It was nice to be out cycling around, which felt very Swedish.

The group stopped at Skeppsbro Bakeri for fika, which was a lovely cafe on Gamla Stan, near the water. I got a Kardemummabullar which is the cinnamon roll with cardamom.

Anyway, the tour ended around 12:30/1 and I walked back to the airbnb to meet Louie and head out together. He was feeling a bit better so we needed lunch. I also needed to shower since I had been biking all morning, so after that we decided to go back to the Skeppsbro Bakeri since it was nearby and had great views and I wanted him to see it.

We also enjoyed watching the birds eat crumbs and at one point, steal an entire pastry from an unsuspecting customer.

We wandered around more after our lunch, just taking in the views of Stockholm. That one above is the Royal Palace on Gamla Stan.

We walked over to the island of Skeppsholmem and Kastelhommen as well, just wandering around enjoying the sites. I told Louie what I could recall from the bike tour as well as enjoying the slower pace.

We liked these little vehicles quite a lot.

Every statue is improved by putting a bird on it.

Our next “event” was attending an orchestra concert at the Konserthuset. We had tickets to see the Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra perform. The concert was a Mozart Piano Concerto for Two Pianos, Strum by Jessie Montgomery, and Elgar’s Enigma Variations, and was conducted by Lina González-Granados.

We had comfortable seats towards the middle of the main floor and enjoyed not being on our feet for a bit! The hall was really nice and the concert was terrific.

I loved this electronic sign at the beginning: “Allow space for your own and others’ musical treat-let the music speak and your mobile stay resting.”

“Many thanks for your consideration.”

We bought a program, which was easy to do with credit card–there is really no cash needed in Sweden–we didn’t touch a single Swedish Kroner the entire visit. Which might be a little sad, actually, but it is extremely convenient.

Intermission was long as expected, probably 10 minutes longer than we are used to. There were some tables set up with food and drinks for those who prepurchased, but we didn’t both with it.

There was an organ player, way up in the loft. I actually didn’t recall that there was organ in the Enigma Variations, but evidently there was. He sat in his loft on the side of the organ just chilling out for most of the piece, and then right towards the end put himself into “playing position” and then suddenly things were a little louder, but no big solo moments for the organ player. The orchestra sounded terrific overall, lots of lovely string playing and terrific ensemble in the group.

We still needed dinner after that, but decided to head back to the Gamla Stan first and get dinner near our place.

We ended up at Restaurant Kryp In which was a Rick Steves recommendation and had some nice outdoor seating (though it was a bit chilly, there was a heater). They served traditional Swedish food, so I tried the meatballs for the first time. Meatballs, potatoes, lingonberries, and pickled cucumbers (some would just call those pickles.) We shared that plus a fish dish.

And that was end of that day as well. I will end my post there, and just say that we definitely went to sleep soon after–it was a long and busy day–my phone captured 20,730 steps and 8.62 miles, but I didn’t set it for the bike ride, so that would have been more of course. (I should have recorded it but I just simply forgot.)