This travel update is part one of our two-week stay in Stockholm, Sweden. It covers September 25 – 27. “Any text in quotes and Italics has been copied and pasted from some informational website like Wikipedia.”

September 25, 2023 – Monday: Riding Trains

We were up at 4:30 this morning to get ready for our train trip to Stockholm. It was, as usual in Bergen, raining. We wore our raincoats but our large suitcases don’t have rain covers so we had to pull them through the rain, up a hill, to get to the bus stop. I took this picture at the bus stop, I don’t think Patti was thrilled about pulling her luggage in the rain.

When we got off the bus downtown we walked through the rain again to the train station. Here’s Patti at the station. I think she looks a little bedraggled.

We had an hour to wait so Patti got a cinnamon roll and I got a hotdog. We were happy because the train tracks were covered so we were thinking that we wouldn’t have to go back out into the rain to board the train. Here’s Patti next to our train inside the station.

Unfortunately, our seats were in the last carriage which was outside the station, so we had to walk one train-car’s worth of distance in the rain. But that was the last of Bergen’s rain that we had to endure.

We rode two trains today, one from Bergen to Oslo and then we changed trains in Oslo to go to Stockholm. This is our path. We went from the North Sea to the Baltic Sea.

The train line from Bergen to Oslo is known as a touristy thing to do because the scenery is so beautiful. A lot of people take that train just to see the scenery. And, it really was nice, I’ll put in a few pictures here. I think this was some kind of aquaculture facility.

The train line ran beside waterways and I took lots of pictures like this of the water, then the hills on the other side with waterfalls looking like thin streaks of silver, then the low clouds.

We passed small marinas and towns.

At the lower altitudes there were a lot of trees, houses, and farms.

At the higher altitudes there was just lichen and moss, but in many different shades of oranges and yellows.

And also a lot of bare rock.

There were plenty of big lakes too.

And small towns.

After we descended a bit the trees returned and there were lots of waterfalls to see.

The land turned green.

This is a pretty setting for a town.

The rivers got wider and the water was moving fast.

To summarize, the scenery was very pretty. We highly recommend it.

At lunchtime we went to the dining car. I got Swedish Meatballs with mashed potatoes and lingonberry sauce, which I enjoyed. It looks like the lady behind me enjoyed her food as well.

We had about a 1.5 hour layover at the Oslo train station so we found a nice place to sit and wait for our train to Stockholm. Patti was all dried out at this point and seemed happier than she was this morning. We put our jackets over the handles of our rolling suitcases so they would finish drying.

We both got fruit smoothies to drink and watched the departures board. I enjoy looking at the place names in different countries. I didn’t recognize many of these.

When our train was on the platform we went down and got onboard. Here we are on the platform.

And here we are onboard the Swedish train heading toward Stockholm.

It was an easy ride to Stockholm and we arrived at about 10:30 PM. I had directions to get to our apartment using public transportation; however, we were tired and decided to take a taxi instead. The taxi ended up costing about $45USD for a 15-minute ride! We won’t be taking any more taxis in Stockholm.

We are staying in a studio apartment hosted by ApartDirect here in Stockholm. Patti found it online and made the reservations a couple of weeks ago.

Here’s the building from across the street. Our front door is bottom left.

Below are pictures of the interior of the apartment.

There’s also an enclosed patio outside. Unfortunately, it’s been a little too chilly here to sit outside.

I like the place and at $78USD per night I think it’s a good value.

After arriving at the apartment, we unpacked enough to get ready for bed.

September 26, 2023 – Tuesday: Our First Day in Stockholm

We slept late this morning then spent some time opening our luggage and setting things out to dry. There were some spots in our bags that had gotten wet from walking in the rain in Bergen yesterday and we discovered some items were still damp.

Around noon we took an informal walking tour north from where we’re staying up into some of the islands of Stockholm. Stockholm is built on 14 islands and each one seems to have its own personality. Here’s a map of our walk today.

Södermalm is the first island we come to when we walk north.

“Södermalm, often shortened to just Söder, is the southern district of Stockholm City Centre. The Södermalm district covers the island of the same name (formerly called Åsön), which, however, is not fully separated from the peninsula of Södertörn (or the rest of the Swedish mainland), as water to both its north and south does not flow freely but passes through a lock and a man-made waterway.”

From what we saw today Södermalm seems to be a busy modern city area with broad streets, lots of apartment buildings and stores. The area hums with vitality.

We continued walking north from Södermalm and got to the next island, Gamla Stan, which means “Old Town”. This is one of the popular historic districts with lots of picturesque older buildings. Here’s a few of them from across the street.

We passed by the Royal Palace.

And the Parliament House.

The waterway between Gamla Stan and the next island to the north was running fast.

We spent some time walking along the main tourist street of Gamla Stan and looking into a lot of the tourist shops. There are a LOT of souvenirs here!

There are an abundant number of bike riders here in Stockholm, and it’s not the children riding bikes, it’s the adults. Nearly every apartment building and every office building has a cluster of bikes parked in front of their buildings. Instead of driving cars or taking public transportation, they commute to work on their bikes!!!

At the end of the day we returned on the same path we’d taken earlier.

September 27, 2023 – Wednesday: Östermalm

The island of Östermalm is the next one north from where we went yesterday. Patti a suggested walking tour she saw in one of her online library books — a Pocket Guide to Stockholm. This was also a good opportunity for us to do a dry run for riding public transportation with our bags on October 9 when we’re taking the train to Copenhagen. That way we don’t have to take a $45 taxi to the train station. The tram to the subway to the train station from here will cost about $7.50USD for both of us. I’m trying to stay out of the poor house.

Here’s the walking route we took tooday.

We only have to walk a block and a half to get to the nearest Tram station and from there we take the #30 Tram to the Gulmarsplan station where we transfer to the subway which we ride north to the Central Train Station of Stockholm. Here we are on the subway. I was trying to get a selfie but a nearby woman offered to take our picture.

At the Central Station we bypassed the stairs, there were no escalators, and found an elevator to use. That’s because the next time we do this we’ll have our 50-pound rolling suitcases which are difficult to push and pull stairs when you’re “old and weak” like we are. The elevator took us up to the subway exit gates and from there we found the departure signs for the trains and tunnels leading to the various platforms. With our dry run accomplished, I feel 95% confident that we’ll have no trouble getting there on October 9 to catch the train to Copenhagen. 95% is pretty good for an engineer.

Here we are outside the Central Station.

The train station is actually in the Norrmalm district just to the west of Östermalm. As we walked toward the starting point of our self-guided walking tour the first thing we saw was this church at the end of a street between two buildings.

We learned that it is St. Clara’s Church.

“The Convent and Church of St. Clare was founded on the site in 1280s. In 1527, Gustav Vasa, King of Sweden, had the church and convent torn down. Construction of the current church started in 1572 under Johan III. The graveyard which is almost surrounded now by modern buildings was started in the 17th century. The church tower was built as part of restoration work in the 1880s and is 116 metres (381 ft) tall. The church contains a 35-bell carillon, which was cast by the Bergholtz Bellfoundry in 1965.”

It’s a gorgeous church inside! I really liked the round paintings on the ceiling illustrating bible stories.

There’s a beautiful organ.

After the church we walked along busy streets with lots of stores, shopping malls, and department stores. Here’s Patti outside Åhléns.

“Åhléns is a chain of Swedish department stores. With locations in almost every city in the country, including 18 in Stockholm alone as of March 2007, it is the fourth largest group of fashion stores in Sweden.”

We walked through the ground floor which had the typical things you’d expect in a big department store.

NK is another famous department store in Stockholm. This NK building is actually quite old and has the original cast iron construction in some places.

“Nordiska Kompaniet (NK) is the name of two luxury department stores located in Stockholm and Gothenburg, in Sweden. The store in Stockholm receives some twelve million visitors annually, with the figure for the store in Gothenburg being about three million and the total number of staff around 1,200.”

Patti didn’t find any prices on the shoes, probably because “if you have to ask, you can’t afford it”.

As we approached the first stop on our walking tour, we saw these two dogs in an interesting wheeled conveyance. They were very quiet waiting for their owner to return.

Our first stop was the National Library of Sweden.

“The National Library of Sweden (Swedish: Kungliga biblioteket, KB, meaning “the Royal Library”) is Sweden’s national library. It collects and preserves all domestic printed and audio-visual materials in Swedish, as well as content with Swedish association published abroad. Being a research library, it also has major collections of literature in other languages.”

The main reading room is still maintained with the original cast iron framing and it’s very pretty. There were a lot of people young and old sitting at the desks, looking very intently at books, notebooks, and computer screens. It was very quiet.

Here’s a closeup of the ceiling.

The next stop on the tour was Svampen.

“The ‘Svampen’ is a concrete rain cover designed by Holger Blom in 1937. It was originally constructed as a rain cover and designed to house a small kiosk that was built around the central pole. This made sense at the time, as it was located in the middle of a traffic triangle of an important junction.”

And next was the Sture Gallerian, a big shopping mall.

It was getting on towards supper time at this point and we were close to a well-known food hall called Östermalms Saludhall so we went in to see if we could get something to eat. The hall is very pretty inside.

We ended up eating at one of the restaurants where Patti got the Swedish Meatballs with mashed potatoes and lingonberry sauce and I got the baked salmon, it was a nice meal.

The final thing on our self-guided walking tour was a famous street along which there are lovely old mansions. Here’s one of them.

It was a little difficult to get a decent picture because there’s a tree-lined thoroughfare in front of them. But here you can at least see the tops of the mansions, each with a distinctive dome or rooftop ornamentation.

By this time it had gotten dark and we rode public transit back home. Google Maps found convenient connections and we rode the bus (red line on the map) to the subway (green line on the map) to the Tram (orange line on the map).

The trip took about 45 minutes. The subway was pretty crowded at this time of the evening, standing room only. We found yellow poles to hang on to.