I wasn’t sure if I’d be up for travelling for this weekend, especially since starting a new project and not quite getting over the jetlag I had from Australia. Since I had tickets booked for Stockholm before I had left for my most recent trip, I thought I’d better not waste it, so Friday I headed to the airport to get onto a plane to visit Stockholm in Sweden. The forecast for this weekend was cold temperatures and generally very wet, and according to a Swedish workmate of mine, is very typical for Sweden. For a lot of the weekend it was pretty cold, and rained a fair amount but there were a few hours of warm sunshine and that certainly didn’t stop the locals from getting out and about.

Stockholm’s Arlanda airport is a great example of what the Swedes do so well – design. It is surprisingly modern, with polished wood floors and clean cut interiors and lots of frosted glass and bright metal trimmings making everything appear spacious. It seems that the airport caters for late flights, which I’m thankful for considering we arrived at the early hour of 2am thanks to delays at Heathrow, and there was a bus waiting to drop us off into the middle of the city centre.

Stockholm is very walkable, and as long as it’s not pouring down, can be quite pleasant to walk around in. There are plenty of pedestrian and biking paths and lots of parks and open spaces worth checking out. There are also a ridiculous number of museums to keep you occupied though we didn’t bother checking them all out. One museum definitely worth visiting is the Vasa museum, containing one of the most famous vessels the Swedes have ever created. It is, in some ways, quite funny to find a country celebrating an endeavour to build a massive ship that, when it finally set out on its first voyage, capsized and sunk into the harbour before it had even completed! As entertaining as the story is, I highly recommend the visit to it.

It is worth visiting the city hall as well, home of where the Nobel Laureates celebrate each year. Our guide spoke English extremely well and entertained us quite easily for the 45 minutes as he talked us through each of the rooms. The city hall also has a tower that is worth climbing before you get to the tour as it gives you a great view of Stockholm from above.

Food need not be expensive in Sweden, though a number of the restaurants cater for the higher end of the market. A number of pubs and cafes serve food at moderate prices, though be wary of the cost of a drink with a pint of Guiness, for example costing 60 Swedish Kroners or about £4.5! Overall I had a great weekend and I came away thinking how nice and modern the city was, and Swedish people being very friendly and approachable.