A lovely holiday in the North: Stockholm

I recently came back from a holiday in one of my favourite cities– Stockholm. It was my second visit to Stockholm, so apart from admiring Sweden’s beauty I also had the chance to observe what has changed since my last visit there in 2009. I spent my holiday in Sweden in the company of my boyfriend and our Swedish friends, Anders and Viktoria, with whom we stayed during our trip. They made this trip even more amazing. <3

 

From my point of view, Stockholm is an open-minded, calm city with a lot of stuff to do, whatever your interests are. Our interests included getting to know the gothic & alternative scene in the city - parties, concerts, alternative clothes shops; vegetarian and vegan eating options; sightseeing and getting to know some of the beautiful and unique places in the city.

Hopefully this journal entry could serve as a small city guide to you, if you go on a trip to Stockholm:)

Sightseeing

 

There is a plenty of lovely places to see in Stockholm, so of course we did not manage to see all of them.

One of the places you definitely should not miss when visiting Stockholm is Drottingholm. It is a wonderful castle, which must have been inspired by Versailles, but you can find there also typically Swedish elements and in addition even some Asian elements – there is a Chinese Pavilion nearby the castle which is also worth seeing. Unfortunately, it is forbidden to take pictures inside both Drottingholm and the Chinese Pavilion, so I cannot show you photos of the interior, but here are some photos of what the castle, pavilion look like from the outside. 

 

If you want to see something typically Swedish, you should visit Skansen. It is basically an open air museum where you can see traditional Swedish houses, pottery, goldsmith’s and other kinds of workshops, you can buy something tasty in the bakery and see what the buildings in a Swedish town might have looked like in the past. There is also a lot of greenery here, a lot of gardens and playgrounds, parks where you can have a picnic and you can also find a Zoo in the Skansen as well as a smaller kind of zoo with Nordic animals and a place with domestic animals such as rabbits or goats. I should mention that none of these Zoos are a typical Zoo with small cages for the animals, the animals here in Skansen have quite a lot of space here. This time we have not visited the zoo with exotic animals only the one with Nordic animals, because there is simply too much to see in Skansen to see everything at one time (unless you spend the whole day there). Here are a few pictures from Skansen.

In Stockholm you will also find several truly interesting museums, for example Nordiska Museet (The Nordic Museum) and Vasa Museet (The Vasa Museum)  - located close to each other at Djurgården, Fotografiska Museet, Ostasiatiska Museet (Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities) and The Royal Armoury located in the Royal Palace. We  have visited Vasa Museet and Fotografiska museet this time Here are a few pictures from the Vasa Museet which houses a ship from the 17th century.

One of the most charming places in Stockholm would also be Gamla Stan – the city centre.

It is the perfect place for an evening walk. Also you will find the Royal Palace (Kungliga slottet) here, in the city centre. I personally like Drottingholm much more, but if you happen to be around at noon, the ceremony of changing the guards in front of the palace may be interesting to watch. Inside the castle there is the Royal Armoury, which is also worth seeing.

 

There is so much more to see in Stockholm, I could write lots more about sightseeing, but instead I will show you a few more pictures and then provide some information about shopping ;)

Shopping

Shopping and looking for alternative shops, Japanese and Chinese shops and unique second hand shops in the places where I travel is always a part of my travelling adventures :)

In comparison with 2009, now, in 2012 a couple of alternative/goth shops unfortunately closed down – Black Moon (which used to be in Gamla Stan), Saturn Return (also used to be located in Gamla Stan at Tyska Brinken) - I think they are currently searching for a new location for the shop and also Poizen, which used to be a very nice goth shop only kept the name of the store, but they now sell souvenirs for the tourists instead of alternative clothing and accesorries =/

So far, it may seem to you as if there were alternative/goth shops left in Stockholm, but fortunately that’s not the case. You can still find some really nice alternative and goth shops. They are located mainly at Drottninggatan – Rio (which could be perhaps the cheapest of alternative shops in Stockholm), Rockzone (more rock and metal oriented, but you might find something also there), C.U.M. Clubwear (which has awesome and crazy party clothes), Beyond Retro (a unique vintage shop with lots of glittery clothes). Some of them are also situated just around the corner from Drottinggatan - at Gamla Brogatan: Blue Fox; Sko Uno – an alternative shoes store;  Mum’s Underwear – basically underwear shop, but they also have some nice platform shoes and high heels.

I also stumbled across 2 Chinese shops (there are probably much more but I was not particularly looking for them). There is one called simply China at Drottninggatan, where I bought a lovely black-red Chinese blouse and there is Xin Xin at Gamla Brogatan.

Addresses:

Blue Fox

Gamla brogatan 27

111 20 Stockholm

Mum's Underwear

Gamla brogatan 25

111 22 Stockholm

Sko Uno

(alternative shoes store)

Gamla brogatan 34

Stockholm

Xin Xin

(chinese shop)

Gamla Brogatan 

11120 Stockholm

Rio

  

Drottninggatan 28 

11151  Stockholm

Rockzone

Drottninggatan 10

 111 51 Stockholm

C.U.M. Clubwear

Drottninggatan 71b

Stockholm

China Store

Drottninggatan 88
11136 Stockholm

Beyond Retro

Drottninggatan 77

111 60 Stockholm

Sound Pollution

 (record store)

Stora Nygatan 18  

111 27 Stockholm

The Science Fiction Bookstore
(also has a selection of manga ^-^)
Västerlånggatan 48
Gamla stan
Stockholm

Rocktown

Västerlånggatan 42

Gamla stan
111 29 Stockholm

Shock

 Beyond Retro

 C.U.M. Clubwear

 Sound Pollution

 Mum's Underwear

 Blue Fox

Clubs/Events

 Unfortunately we did not really get to explore the nightlife of Stockholm much, since there were no events we were interested in during the short period when we stayed in Sweden. There was a sort of summer break for most clubs and parties at that time. But if you happen to be in Stockholm in August or later on there are some interesting upcoming events – for example a Zombie Walk on 25th August connected with an after party in Club BODY SHOP and also The Stockholm Burlesque Festival on 12th and 13th October. There will be also probably other events as well, also the club TechNoir and Club Bodytåget organize events, though not regularly. Besides there are also fetish parties organized by Dekadance (www.dekadance.se). 

Links:

 Tech Noir

http://www.tech-noir.org/

 Club Body Shop

http://www.facebook.com/bodyshopSTHLM

Stockholm Burlesque Festival

http://www.stockholmburlesquefestival.com/

Eating

The last part of my entry about Stockholm is about eating possibilites.

Both me and my boyfriend being vegetarian, we are always interested in veg-friendly and vegetarian restaurants when we travel. This time we were accompanied by our Swedish friends who are vegan, and we also got to know about some restaurants suitable for vegans.

While in Stockholm we ate twice in a vegetarian buffet restaurant called Hermitage in Gamla Stan. Most of the food in the bufet is vegan, the rest is vegetarian. The food is tasty, i tis not over-prized and the other people eating in the restaurant were friendly. So we enjoyed eating there!

Another good option for vegans and vegetarians is O'Mamma Mia. The cuisine is mostly Italian but there are some Mexican meals as well. It is not particularly a vegetarian restaurant, they also have meals with meat, but there is a good choice of meals both for vegetarians and vegans. We tried some of their vegan pizzas and they were delicious.

There’s also a Chinese vegan restaurant in Stockholm called Lao Wai, but they are closed during the summer months, so we did not get a chance to eat there. Our friends Anders and Viktoria recommend this restaurant.

Some other restaurants, where me and my boyfriend enjoyed a meal during our stay in Stockholm are not specifically vegetarian, but we could find there a good choice of vegetarian meals. We ate for example at Pong Buffet . We also tried the Mongolian Barbecue Restaurant at Drottinggatan. The restaurant has various buffets, so we ate something from the Chinese and the Japanese buffet, we could not really choose much from the Mongolian buffet though, because there was mostly meat.

A cheap option as for eating in Stockholm is Kungshallen – a building which houses 15 restaurants – some of them are fast foods. There’s cuisine from all around the world – Indian, Thai, Lebanese, Italian, Greek, Swedish, etc. It’s quite crowded and noisy, but it’s cheap and the choice of food is also good.

And last but not least when talking about eating in Sweden, do not forget to try the yummy cinnamon cookies when you are there. Some very delicious ones are sold for example in Skansen. :)

Addresses:

Hermitage

(vegetarian restaurant)

Stora Nygatan 11

Gamla Stan

Stockholm

Lao Wai
(Chinese vegan restaurant) 
Luntmakargatan 74 
Stockholm

 O'Mamma Mia
(vegan-friendly, Italian and Mexican cuisine)

 Kungstensgatan 60

11329 Stockholm

 I hope this journal entry provided some good/useful info about Stockholm =)

Have a nice day everyone! ^_^