Third Day in Stockholm - August 6

Today was the first full day for our tour. After our good buffet breakfast (no Swedish pancakes on week days), we left the hotel and strolled down the street to the square. Lisa pointed out several sights including Östermalms Saluhall - the food market. We then went into the T-bana to get some experience riding the subway. We left from Östermalmstorg and got off at T-Centralen. Then we walked around the central part of the city and into the Gamla Stan. Along the walk, Lisa pointed out all of the points of interest including the Queens Garden that was paved over and the Nobel Museum where all prizes except the peace prize are awarded each year. We meandered through the narrow streets and wove our way to the ferry landing. Our ferry trip was to Djurgårdsvägen where we departed and walked to the Vasa Museum. Viewing the old war ship that was raised from the floor of the sea was really fascinating.

After the Vassa Museum, we used our Stockholm Card and caught a tram to take us back to the hotel area. The cards lets you into most city sites and allows unlimited use of public transportation. It's a real bargain if you want to visit a bunch of sites in one day.

We grabbed our dirty laundry at the hotel and went to the Östermalms Saluhall for lunch. This market is rated by Bon Appetite as one of the ten best in the world. It is like no market we have ever been in. It was extremely clean and neat with several vendors selling meats, fish, vegetables, cheese, coffee, etc.. It also had many kiosks for ordering lunch. Ann had a huge salad with quinoise, lox, vegetables, dried tomatoes, red peppers, etc. with balsamic vinegar dressing. I had a ham and cheese sandwich on a seeded roll. I also shared some of Ann’s salad.


The Food Market

After lunch we caught the T-bana and rode it to a Laundromat to wash our dirty clothes. While they were washing and drying, we wandered around the area a saw a different part of Stockholm. It wasn’t a busy as the areas we had been in before - probably because it wasn’t a tourist area.

Then it was back to the hotel, Happy Hour at 5:00 and buffet dinner at 6:30. The highlight of the evening was a visit to The Stockholm Ice Bar. Absolut has ice bars in a few Scandinavian cities. They are small rooms made out of ice. The bar, the benches and wall are all made out of ice. Drinks are served in large, hollowed out ice cubes. They are all vodka mixes in various colors with various mixes. We wore insulated parkas with hoods and winter gloves. Entertainment was recorded music by Abba. It was cold in there. The room could fit only about 20 people and we had a fixed time (45 minutes) that we could be in there. They told us to leave when it was time.

We walked and T-bana’ed back to the hotel. We took the Blue Line so that we could see some of its art work that Rick Steves wrote about. It was interesting but not too spectacular.