Well, we survived the plane ride on Norwegian Air. I don’t know what was worse, the nauseousness or the tiny little seats on the plane. One would think when you are flying a 787 Dreamliner that you would have a special experience. I guess if we would have upgrade to Premium Cabin or purchased their meal deluxe meal service that someone would have paid some attention to us. Unfortunately, like must non-customer focused companies, the employees barely made eye contact with the passengers, all the while complaining about their shifts. Oh well, I have faith that Stockholm will make up for this debacle.
We arrived in Stockholm and took a train, which dropped us off within a few blocks of our Airbnb host. Thank you Joe, Nathan and Brian for co-founding the idea of Airbnb. What a concept! Travel to anywhere, I mean anywhere and not stay in a hotel, but stay in a neighborhood so that you can get a local’s perspective on living in that city. You get a clean place to stay, the use of their kitchen, a private bathroom and advice on where to go and what to see from your host. Depending on where you are visiting, you can stay in a yurt, a cabin, an apartment or a home.
On this trip, we stayed in beautiful apartment near St Eriksplan. Our host, Iyasu has remodeled his home with some amazing wood floors. The apartment has a nice view, wifi, a nice size kitchen and is located in a great neighborhood.
Side-note, Mr. Iyasu is a snazzy dresser. I had a little shoe envy while staying at his place.
Approximately 900,000 people live in Stockholm, with an estimated 1.5 million living in Stockholm Metro alone. With such large numbers, one might be surprised to see the amount of parks and green space still available.
I plan to visit the UK at some point, however at the moment I am in love with coffee countries.
The top five coffee counties in my book are the United States, France, Italy, Denmark and Sweden. One of the coolest things about Sweden is fika. Fika is said to mean “to have coffee”. However can also be translated as “where is the coffee”. No matter what it means, it sounds – and tastes – good to me.
In Sweden, fika is often accompanied with a pastry or some form of sandwich, which sucks if you are gluten-free. But God bless a culture that stops works and gets out for a walk to have a fika!
After a good nights sleep, we jump on the Tbana and head over to City Hall for a tour and to watch the changing of the guard.
City Hall is a fascinating building. It is a major tourist attraction and the place of the Nobel Prize banquet.
If you want to learn a little history about the city in an intimate group setting, I encourage you to take one of the Old Town walking tours.
