Stockholm City Guide

Hey everyone – Hope you all enjoyed a relaxing weekend so far!

Firstly, thank you all for your amazing feedback on last weeks blog post – I really appreciate it! This week, I am back with Part II of my travels through Scandinavia and I am stoked to share this one with you.

In May, I got to travel to beautiful Stockholm for a little meet-up with my family. We spent an amazing couple of days exploring all parts of this wonderful city and, of course, I captured every second of it for you! So here are my favorite travel recommendations for you…

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Stay

During our time in Stockholm, we stayed at Downtown Camper, which is a very cool hotel in Norrmalm. The location of our hotel was perfect, as we could basically reach every corner of the city by foot. Moreover, I completely fell in love with the cool design and layout of the hotel. It is very young and vibrant, with lots of Scandinavian design touches here and there – And I mean, does it get any better than Scandinavian interior design? I don´t think so.
The concept of Downtown Camper is composed to function as a highly sustainable place to stay, as well as an invitation to gather and socialize with other ´Campers´. In fact, there are lots and lots of cool areas scattered across the hotel that serve that exact purpose, such as a gaming room, a cinema, multiple conference rooms, a gym, a pool area and many other features. Another significant touch, are the day-time activities. At Downtown Camper, you can participate in many different activities such as a running club, going kayaking, enjoying a drink in ´The Nest´ and many more outdoor pursuits. Whatever serves you well!
Enjoying some delicious breakfast in the morning is another possibility at Downtown Camper, however, I personally found the breakfast buffet very hectic and stressful. Don´t get me wrong, the breakfast was delicious and had an outstanding amount of choices, but the amount of people rushing past you was just too overwhelming for me in that small space.
Anyways, enough chatting about our hotel – Let´s talk all about Food & Drinks…

Eat

Growing up in a family of four, with everyone living their own stressful life, food has always been the number one thing that gathers the whole family in one place. That obviously does not change on our holidays. In fact, we get pretty over-excited to try all kinds of different restaurants and cafés. So here are some of my top food recommendations from Stockholm…

Fabrique Stenugnsbageri

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I know, this place has a rather complicated name and if you´re a foreigner like me, I wouldn’t even dare to try and pronounce it. What I dare you to do though, is to check out this bakery and try one of their heavenly Cinnamon Buns. The Cinnamon Buns at Fabrique Stenungnsbageri are squishy, juicy, fluffy and just perfectly spiced. A definite must-try!

Primo Ciao Ciao

On one of our first days in Stockholm, we went for a little stroll through Södermalm. As we passed Primo Ciao Ciao, the smell and look of the Italian food caught our attention – So we just had to stop and give it a try. Both pizza and the handmade pasta tasted more than amazing and were pretty well enjoyed with a side of Aperol Spritz – It´s not a successful lunch without a good old Aperol Spritz, is it?

Svartengrens

This restaurant is a true recommendation for all my meat lovers out there! At Svartengrens, you can eat all sorts of delicious meat dishes that are locally sourced. The restaurant focuses mainly on the sustainable butchering of all their served meats.
Now, when it comes to the taste of their food, I can´t really tell you much… For those of you that are new to this platform, I am a vegetarian – So meat isn´t really my field of culinary expertise. However, my family enjoyed the food a lot and I was rather satisfied with my variety of side dishes.
What I can tell you though, is that the interior of this restaurant was quite funny. I´d say it looks a bit like your grandmas old living room, but in sort of a up-cycled and cool way. Sounds funky, I know!
If you´re into meat dishes and find yourself looking for a delicious dinner in Stockholm – Give Svartegrens a try! The look on my family´s face seemed very promising!

Tako

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Now for this outstanding restaurant, I do not even know where to start… It is a Japanese and South Korean influenced restaurant that serves lots of delicious small Asian tapas and sushi. I am not over-exaggerating when I tell you that this place had by far the most delicious food I have ever eaten. Especially the sushi was very delicious and put together with so much attention to detail. Coming from a family of absolute sushi-fanatics – You can definitely take my word on this one!
The layout of Tako is really cool as well with lots of small corners to sit and dine rather secluded. I´d say it has sort of a chic, yet mysterious underground feel to it – Unlike any place I had ever dined at before. While we were making our way over to this amazing restaurant, we probably walked past it about 5 times, as it is in fact underground and has a very small, unspectacular entrance.
Highly Highly recommend this place to you! No matter if you´re a fish and meat lover, or even a vegetarian like me – They serve incredibly beautiful and delicious food for everyone.

Nybrogatan 38

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Nybrogatan 38 is a cool food spot in Östermalm that was recommended to me by a friend. We started off our final lunch in Stockholm with a delicious raspberry lemonade, enjoyed a Halloumi Skewer and ended it with my dad ordering one hell of a blueberry waffle.
The place was beautiful and we definitely enjoyed our food there! So take this as sort of a recommendation from a friend of a friend!

Downtown Camper

Downtown Camper might sound familiar to you now right? On one of our evenings, as we were all rather exhausted from all the running around town and exploring, we decided to grab dinner at our hotels restaurant – Lucky us that we felt a little tired, because the food was delicious! We tried foods of all sort, from a veggie burger to a chocolate praliné and I enjoyed every second of it. Turns out, hotel food isn´t that bad after all…

Djurgarden Fika

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During our visit at Djurgarden, we stopped to sit in a lovely sort of garden café to enjoy a Swedish fika. The place was a really cute self-service café offering lots of different cake variations, as well as a couple of savory dishes. It´s a lovely place for a relaxing Fika!

The Nest

The Nest is exactly what you´d imagine after reading the name – A really cozy bar area, located at the rooftop of Downtown Camper. Up there, you have the possibility to enjoy a delicious cocktail both inside and outside, while gazing at the beautiful skyline of Stockholm. Definitely another recommendation of mine!

At Six Rooftop

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This place though… I have no idea how to explain it to be fair, but I´ll try my best. We decided to use the spare time prior to our dinner reservation to get a nice drink somewhere. So we decided to go up to the ´At Six´ hotels rooftop, not knowing what would await us. The rooftop area is an inter-connection of multiple houses with lots of individual bars and ´hang-out areas´. There´s lots of funky music, cool people and amazing design on this area – You just have to visit, if you get the chance! My personal favorite was the Aperol Spritz bar of course, however, I have to say it is a rather expensive place… 13€ for an Aperol Spritz is not really a students budget, but luckily, I had my parents with me – Thank you dad!

Neighborhoods & Activities

Next up, I really wanted to share some of the activities that we did with you, as well as some of the neighborhoods that we went to. For the most part, I just inserted some pictures of the neighborhoods for you, as all of them were incredibly beautiful, yet hard to describe. So let´s commence with some of my favorite pictures from this trip…

Djurgarden

Djurgarden was such a crazy mixture of all sorts of impressions. On the one hand, you had rather busy tourist environments surrounding the Gröna Lund area. On the other, you find yourself in a relaxing park strolling past beautiful, old houses and end up at a garden café.

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Gamla Stan

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Kastellholmen

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Skeppsholmen

The views from this part of the city were incredible! We went for a nice, long walk along the water in Skeppsholmen and just enjoyed the calming atmosphere. Really recommend you to go there for taking some amazing pictures and taking a minute to breathe (away from rather hectic and touristy downtown)!

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Other neighborhoods – Östermalm, Norrmalm, Södermalm

Some of the other neighborhoods that we visited were Östermalm, Norrmalm and Södermalm. All three of them are lovely for strolling through a couple of shops and having a closer look at the beautiful architecture of Stockholm.

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ABBA museum

Yes, indeed! We visited the ABBA museum. This museum is definitely not your usual museum, which I really appreciated. There are lots and lots of fun things to do and experience while learning more about all four members of the Swedish music band. In fact, did you know that ABBA had a fifth member?

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We had an incredible time recording some ABBA songs in a studio, performing to Dancing queen on stage and taking pictures in costumes. The only person that got a little disappointed was my dad, as you couldn’t really hear him in the song that we recorded – That´s what you get when your daughter (gifted with an angelic voice) is closest to the microphone…

Stockholm Marathon

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Another amazing thing that we got to witness during our time in Stockholm was the annual Stockholm marathon. First, we only wanted to watch for a couple of minutes, however, as the atmosphere was just incredible, we ended up following the crowd up to the Olympiastadion to await the first runners at the finish line. The atmosphere during the run was incredibly emotional and touching somehow, especially watching people of all sorts participate in the marathon. In fact, it actually made me want to participate in a marathon myself… One day. – Still have quite some training to do though!

Water taxi

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If you read last weeks post about my road trip through Scandinavia you will know that I am a huge fan of water taxis and ferries, as they are a great replacement for any expensive, touristy boat tours. So we obviously had to take a water taxi in Stockholm as well and it was amazing to look at this beautiful city from a different angle! Moreover, it is such an easy and inexpensive way to commute in Stockholm, as the city consists of 14 different islands.

Stockholm Castle

In Stockholm, there are lots and lots of ´Castles´ – The most popular one though, is the Royal Palace that you will probably walk by a million times. It´s an impressive building and definitely worth a visit I´d say. I would´ve definitely enjoyed the opportunity to have a peek inside.

So that´s it for Part II of my Scandinavia travels – I really hope you enjoyed reading as always! I definitely enjoyed visiting Stockholm for the first time, as I had heard lots of wonderful things about this city. Traveling with my family is always a really fun experience

And with the blink of an eye, my time of exploring Stockholm with my family ended. I had been very keen to visit Stockholm for quite some time, as I heard a lot of lovely things about this city up north. Overall, I had an incredible 5 days in Sweden – I always have the best time traveling with my family to be honest! Stockholm is definitely a place I would love to return to and explore more corners of this incredible place, however, I personally think that nothing compares to the beauty of Copenhagen. Maybe, it´s because Copenhagen became sort of my second home, but the lifestyle in Copenhagen is just a little more ´laid-back´ and cozy I´d say. So, I think it is only fair of me to end the Scandinavia Travel series with Part III – Can you guess my favorite city yet? Stay tuned…

Hope you enjoyed reading, as always!

Lots of love,

Anna