Day 13: First Day in Stockholm

Our first day in Stockholm was Thursday, May 26. At this point in our trip, we were very tired and decided to take it pretty easy. We had breakfast at the hotel and didn’t leave the building until around 1:30pm. Our first trip was to Drop Coffee on Södermalm island. We spent some time walking around the west side of the island, and ended up at Skinnarviksberget, the highest natural point in central Stockholm.

We stopped at a secondhand store - in that neighborhood, we saw a remarkable number of vintage clothing stores. We also stopped at our very first grocery store of the entire trip. In general, we saw a lot of dogs and families in Stockholm, more than the other cities. We also noticed a lot of eyeglasses stores, which I though was odd considering most people on the streets were not wearing glasses.

We then went to Stadsholmen island/Gamla Stan to have dinner at Bakfickan Djuret. We got reservations at that restaurant through a personal connection - one of Mark’s friends is Swedish and his brother works there. It’s a Michelin star restaurant, so obviously, we had a great time.

That binder is their wine list - it takes 10 people 2 days to do inventory of their wine cellar! (Or maybe it was the other way around?)

We walked a bit more around the island, including past the Royal Palace (although it was closed at that point), before heading back to the hotel for the night.

We used the metro multiple times, mainly the red T13/T14 line. Our first time, we went to the ticket kiosk and bought a paper ticket. One of the metro staff (officers?) redirected us to simply tap our credit card at the turnstile. Mark had to take the paper ticket we bought to the staff behind the window, who could then open the entry gate for him. Purchasing the ticket wasn’t difficult, but not being able to get through the turnstile on your own was definitely a hassle. Apparently they’re planning on removing the ticket kiosks.

We saw two downsides to using the credit card at the turnstile. First, you can’t control what kind of ticket you’re buying - there are supposed to be discounted rates for certain groups, but if you’re just tapping your credit card you’re paying the full amount (39 SEK - not cheap!). Second, we couldn’t use the same credit card right away, to get the second person through the turnstile. (This might’ve been a one-time issue or user error, but we didn’t test it again on our other trips.) The system was definitely designed to favor regular users who use the app rather than their credit card.