Stockholm, Sweden

On the 5^th of April, Stockholm was cold, grey and quite empty due to the mass Easter exodus. It also turned out to be an archipelago – a bunch of islands all banding together to create the Swedish capital. Just imagine the bookshelf section of IKEA, where the shelves are buildings, and the buildings are yellow, white and red-brown, and there’s a river dividing the aisles.

It’s almost but not quite entirely unlike that.

 We spent a large part of our time exploring the Old Town, Gamla Stan, weaving in and around its cobbled streets and off-kilter buildings. The Old Town contained Sweden’s narrowest street, which contained a steady stream of posing tourists. See Figure 1.

A good quarter of the population may have left for the holidays, but Stockholm was full to bursting with two things: dogs and brightly coloured Easter feathers.

A greater part of the dog population could be found strolling along the riverbank, which reminded me strongly of Queenstown in New Zealand. There were even little black bobbing ducks! I made the mistake of trying to feed a couple, only to have the entire Swedish bird population fly at my face.

It snowed. Keep in mind that it was April, or ‘Spring’ as some Northern Hemisphere inhabitants like to call it. It snowed. Our clear view of the Old Town was blizzarded away, but the parents got very excited and insisted on braving out the weather. We followed some distant Moria-style drumming all the way up to the local castle, where we found the changing of the guard in full swing.

Mum and I then engaged a random gentleman as a tour guide and discovered some interesting Stockholm facts. For example: the colour of the buildings reflects the century in which they were built. Also, the castle was burnt to the ground in the seventeenth century when a couple of guards left a fire unattended.

Due to our utter lack of Swedish, restaurant menus were a great source of excitement. On one momentous occasion, I shoved a large scroll of bacon whole into my mouth (as I don’t much like bacon) only to find that it was not bacon at all. It was herring. Pickled herring. And it didn’t taste like bacon.

Easter Eve was wonderful. We spent the morning on a cruise around the archipelago, managing five minutes on deck before the frostbite set in. The scenery was beyond spectacular.

The day got even better in the afternoon, which we spent in Skansen, an outdoor museum of Swedish culture with a Nordic zoo!

I finally realised my lifelong dream of meeting a moose – or 'elk', to be European about it. We also saw grey wolves, brown bears, enormous eagle owls, otters, reindeer, lynx and wolverines. Most impressive of all was the indoor display of – wait for it – tabby cats.

For dinner – Swedish meatballs! (No more herring for me.) Delivered by a rather nice-looking Swedish waiter. Hayley, you were very right. You know what I’m talking about.

Easter Sunday began with victory, when I smashed Dad’s egg with my hard-boiled egg. I smashed it all over the table. It turned out to be soft-boiled, you see. The other breakfasting guests were entertained.

It was the brightest and warmest day yet, at a balmy four degrees. We spent the morning trekking through the Old Town to get to the island opposite our hotel. Dad was on a mission: to climb the random hill. We eventually got there and were rewarded with a panoramic view of Stockholm, all blue and yellow like the Swedish flag. It’s like someone’s fetched their Derwent pencils and coloured all the buildings in nursery colours.

And then Mum picked up a frozen puddle, and Dad asked the fiftieth set of strangers for a family photo, and we trundled off back down to the main city. Where we immediately found more steps to climb: another Dad-mission.

We indulged in Viking history – they didn’t actually wear those horned helmets for the vast majority of the time; disappointing – and more meatballs, and that was the end of our Stockholm visit.