First of all, we decided to go back to Djurgården island (where we'd gone on our second day) and visit another museum there: Nordiska Museet (the Nordic Museum).
We'd seen the building the previous day and had been very impressed by it, as it's like a fairytale castle.
The interior is also very elaborate and has a huge statue of the former king, Gustav Vasa, who looks quite a lot like Henry the Eighth!
During our tour of the museum, we found out that the building was built specifically to be a museum, and that its style comes from Dutch-influenced Danish Renaissance architecture.
The exhibits were also very interesting and taught us a lot about the history and culture of the Nordic countries, with a focus on Sweden. The parts I found most memorable included a recreation of a 1940s Stockholm apartment, an exhibit about the Sámi people, and an exhibit about how Britain influenced Nordic fashion in the 1960s!
Maybe it wasn't quite as exciting and immersive as Skansen, but I'd still consider it to be one of the city's must-visit attractions.
Next we went off in the direction of another museum we wanted to visit. On the way, we saw this fairytale-esque building that I felt compelled to take a photo of. I wasn't sure whether it was a church, a house, or a small castle but I liked it a lot! (I eventually managed to find out later that it was a villa called Jägarhyddan.)
The next museum we'd planned to visit was the ABBA museum, but when we got there, we discovered it would cost the equivalent of about £50 for the two of us to visit! We're not big enough fans of ABBA to be willing to pay that much, so we just looked around the shop and then left. (One of the disadvantages of Scandinavia is that it's certainly an expensive place to spend time in!)
Afterwards we were wondering around, trying to figure out what to do next, when we suddenly came across a ferry terminal. The next boat was leaving in a few minutes time, so we got on board!
The ferries in Stockholm are part of the system of public transport, but we'd heard that they were also a great way of seeing the city. And that definitely turned out to be true! The boat trip was really fun, and it was especially great to see Kastellholmen, a little island with a red castle.
The ferry didn't take us where we'd expected to go; we'd thought it was going to a place called Slussen, but it actually took us to Gamla stan, where we'd been on our first day. That didn't matter though, because we didn't have any particular destination in mind.
After we'd figured out where we were, we decided to walk over to the island of Skeppsholmen to take a closer look at some interesting buildings we'd seen from afar.
The island was quite an unusual place, as it was almost deserted compared to the rest of the city. But it was a very scenic place, and I especially liked the pink building that looked like a castle (Admiralty House). We also had great views across to Gamla stan from there.
After exploring Skeppsholmen, we took the ferry back over to Gamla stan and spent a really nice couple of hours enjoying the sights there for a second time.
Then we made our way back to the central station, passing through one of the main squares of the city, Sergels torg. We'd been past it on the tram in the morning and I'd thought it was quite unattractive, but by night it was all lit up and was really something else.
Part of the square is sunken, and as we walked towards it, something caught our eye; there were hundreds of people there waving Chilean and Mapuche flags!
The day before, the plebiscite for a new constitution had been held in Chile, and the approve vote had won by a landslide. This was why all the Chileans in Stockholm were out celebrating in Sergels torg.
We joined in the celebration for a little while, and it felt like a very historic occasion. I will definitely remember it for a long time.
It was the perfect end to an amazing few days in Sweden.
The next morning, we had to get up at 3am to go and catch our flight. But thankfully everything went much smoother than it had done on the way there! We were able to take the pendeltåg (commuter train) all the way from the hotel to the airport, which worked out much more convenient and cheaper than taking the Arlanda Express, even though we had to pay a special fee to enter the airport. And we also got through security with no problems!
All in all, we really enjoyed Stockholm, and I'm glad that Claudio had the chance to experience a country other than England during his first trip to Europe. It's a shame we couldn't go to France or Italy, but hopefully we'll have other opportunities in the future. Besides, it was great for both of us to discover Scandinavia, a very interesting part of the world which I hadn't visited before. In the future I'd definitely go back to Sweden again, as well as to other Nordic countries.
In a way, it was strange being in Sweden, as it was like Covid didn't exist there. Life was just going on as normal, and most people weren't wearing masks (we were). I kind of got used to having a bit of normality again, so it was a shock when a new national lockdown in England was announced a few days after we got back.
Luckily we were able to fit in one of our most important trips before the new restrictions came into place...
