I can’t start this post without acknowledging the sad fact that I can’t really write about Stockholm; because what should have been nearly 72 hours in Stockholm turned into about 17. Thanks a bunch, British Airways.

(Yes, we got caught up in the great BA disaster, which was unfortunate as we couldn’t get a flight out for another 48 hours and it was devastating as we felt our time in Stockholm ticking away. But we were lucky to have a home to get back to easily when we were ordered to leave Heathrow airport, I really felt for the poor people who weren’t from London and had no desire to be there…)

ANYWAY!! Once we finally got there, the trip was wonderful. Albeit eyewateringly expensive, absolutely everywhere….

What We Did

We flew into Stockholm and got the train from the airport into the city. By the time we arrived it was about 6pm on Monday (rather than 3pm on Saturday as it should have been… ) Oddly and most unlike me, the only thing I had planned for Stockholm was to book dinner on Monday night in Gondolen restaurant which overlooks the city on my friend R’s recommendation, so after freshening up at our hotel (who were quite bemused that we had had a booking for 3 nights and only turned up for the last one of them) we took a walk through the very picturesque old town (Gamla Stan) to get to the restaurant, where we did indeed have a wonderful meal while watching the sun set over the old town.

The next day we were already moving on, taking the train from Stockholm to Copenhagen. Both of us like travelling by train but my other half is a real train geek (you may remember that I only convinced him about our Canada trip because of the Rocky Mountaineer train journey…) so he particularly enjoyed the fast, comfortable train journey while we watched the beautiful Swedish countryside zip past. A few hours later we were in Copenhagen and walking to our AirBnB apartment, where the lovely Tina (our host) met us to show us her beautiful home. We had a fantastic time in Copenhagen, which I intend to expand on fully in another post as I have lots to say! Overall – we walked a lot (2 separate walking tours, both with a fantastic Australian tour guide called Jarrod), we loved the city museum and the Rosenborg palace, visited all the food markets we could, ate a LOT of Danish pastries and drank very little because we couldn’t afford to!

After 4 great days in Copenhagen we were off on the overnight ferry to Oslo. This was actually quite a fun experience which reminded me of being a kid again (we often used to get the overnight ferry from Harwich to Holland to visit friends there), although unfortunately we didn’t manage to get the outer-view cabin we had booked as the boat was overbooked. In the end this didn’t matter too much as it was rainy the next morning so our much-anticipated view of the Oslo fjord as we sailed in was a bit overcast and cloudy. Luckily it was only the first day in Oslo that was grey (we spent most of it in the Astrup-Fearnley museum looking at weird modern art), things improved after that and we managed a walking tour of the city, a boat trip to the Viking ships museum, the Nobel peace prize museum and the art gallery.

Our final stop was a short hop by plane from Oslo to Reykjavik. And Iceland, I fell in love. I will have to sell a kidney to be able to afford to go back, but the scenery is mind-blowing, the people are warm and funny and the sun never goes down in the summer. Just. Amazing.

And now, of course, you get the good stuff…