While traveling around Denmark with my class for core course week, I became friends with some of the people in my class. Tess, my roommate during our travels, mentioned that she was going to Stockholm with some of her friends that weekend, and I had been wanting to visit Stockholm. Another girl in my class, Anna, said she also wanted to go so we planned a trip to Stockholm together after knowing each other for less than 2 days. (We were in the same class for a few weeks but hadn’t ever talked.)
Flight prices from Copenhagen to Stockholm were pretty expensive since we were looking to buy them only 2 days beforehand. But there is an airport in Malmö, Sweden, which is only a 30 minute train ride from Copenhagen, and the flights were a third of the price. So we booked our flights on Thursday night for Saturday morning!
In hind site, we probably should have done a little more research on what is involved in flying out of Malmö, because it turns out that Malmö Airport is actually not in Malmö, but 40 minutes outside of the city. With having an 8am flight, we had to wake up at 4am, take the metro to the Copenhagen Train Station, take the train to Malmö Train Station, take a taxi to the Malmö Airport, fly from Malmö to Stockholm, then take the express tram from Stockholm Airport to the center city. So all in all it was 7 hours of travel for a 1 hour flight!
We didn’t want to pay to pick our seats for such a short flight, so we went with random selection. We thought Anna was lucky because she was assigned a window seat, but this was what she got:
Meanwhile, I was assigned a middle seat but there ended up being no one in the window seat so I moved over and got to watch the scenery change as we flew north. It was pretty warm in Copenhagen when we left, around 40 degrees, but much colder in Stockholm. There was snow on the ground when we landed.
We weren’t able to check into the hostel until 3pm and we were really hungry so we immediately went to find food. We had heard of a restaurant called Pom & Flora that we wanted to try. When we got there the line was out the door since it was brunch time on a Saturday, but we decided to stick it out. After about 25 minutes we were seated and the food came really quickly. I got a dirty chai latte, banana bread, and avocado toast with eggs. Anna got the a spicy version of the egg avocado toast and an acai bowl
Then we walked around the central part of the city and stopped into a bunch of clothing stores. All of the metro stations in Stockholm are decorated with cool designs.
After a couple of hours we were pretty tired of walking around with our heavy backpacks and it was finally time to check into the hostel. We checked in and dropped our stuff off in the room. It was a six person room with three bunk beds, but when we got there no one else staying in our room had moved in yet.
After dropping off our bags, we decided to walk to Gamla Stan, which translates to old town. Here they have very narrow cobble stone streets full of small stores, cafes, and restaurants. We did some window shopping, enjoyed the sun peaking through the buildings, and got cinnamon rolls. (not as good as they are in Denmark, we rated them 7/10)
Anna watched a Swedish TV show growing up called Mooman, and we found so many trinkets with him on it. She bought a Mooman cutting board from a little shop.
Then we decided to go to the Abba Museum which was a bit far away so we took the ferry. It was sunset so we had a pretty view. My favorite thing that we passed was a crane and construction zone that was painted to look like a giraffe.
The Abba Museum was pretty cool and we definitely learned a lot since neither of us knew much about them. I didn’t even know that they were two couples in the band together! There was a room about each of their pasts and how they came to be a group, and the museum went in time through their performances and tours, through when they split up and stopped performing. There were a lot of interactive parts that we enjoyed, and some photo opportunities. The whole museum was playing their most classic songs (mostly the ones from Mamma Mia) so we had those stuck in our heads for hours after.
After Abba, we stopped at Max Burgers for some food since our dinner reservations weren’t until 8:30pm. We have Max Burgers in Copenhagen but I haven’t been there yet. I also didn’t realize how many vegetarian and vegan options they have! I got a vegetarian grilled chicken sandwich, which was really good.
Then we went back to our hostel to change and get ready for the rest of the night. We took longer than we thought we would and we were running late for our reservation at Ice Bar, so we literally ran down the streets.
It was definitely embarrassing but we got there just on time. We were dressed with huge coats and gloves to keep us warm, and allowed into the frozen room. The walls were all thick slabs of ice and the tables and chairs were also made of ice. At the bar, they served drinks in cups of ice.
it was a cool experience and we ended up with some decent photos, but we were both really disappointed by the room. It was much, much smaller than we thought it would be, and the walls had LED lights that were supposed to be on but weren’t.
We asked the employees if they could be turned on and they told us that the LEDs had burned out months ago and wouldn’t be replaced for another month. That definitely made the experience a lot less enjoyable. Our entry ticket included one drink, and we were informed that in order to get another, you would have to completely leave the whole ice bar and pay at the reception desk and come back. We found that to be pretty ridiculous so we left after getting a few pictures.
For dinner we had decided to make a reservation at the same place our friend from our class who was also visiting Stockholm was going with her friends. We didn’t do much research on it before showing up, and we discovered that it was a really nice restaurant with coat check and somewhat formal attire. I was wearing leather pants and a body suit that had no sleeves, so I wanted to keep my coat on but the man said that we couldn’t eat if we didn’t take them off… so I wrapped Anna’s scarf around my shoulders like a shawl.
Our walk to the restaurant had been 20 minutes in crazy wind and freezing cold, so we were already pretty delirious by the time we sat down. We ordered the cheapest wine on the menu (which was still pretty expensive but ended up being delicious) and I got a tarte flambée with porcini mushrooms, pickled red onion, gruyere and truffle cream. It was really, really, really good! Anna decided to get swedish meatballs since she wanted to try real ones while in Sweden. She said they were good, but much more “meaty” than American meatballs and she didn’t love that.
After dinner, we wanted to stop and get alcohol at a store so that we could save money by drinking a bit before going out to the bars. Our friend, Tess, and her friends were still eating at the restaurant and we stopped to say goodbye to them. They informed us that in Stockholm there are strict laws around alcohol that prohibit you from buying it outside of a liquour store, and that the liquour store closes at 3pm.
We didn’t quite believe them and decided to stop at a grocery store and see what they had. We assumed we would be able to pick up a bottle of wine or some beers if hard alcohol wasn’t allowed. But we found that they were correct, because they had rows and rows of alcohol-free beer, and no wine.
Anna didn’t believe it so she asked a girl who was shopping who looked like a local, and she confirmed what we had heard. So we scoured the rows and somehow found cans of Carlsberg beer and we each bought one. I have no idea how that one beer was allowed but no other brands or types were legal, but we were happy to have something. Then we stopped in the candy aisle and put together a random bag of candy and chocolate since we heard Swedish candy was good.
When we got back to the hostel, we both drank our beers and charged our phones while waiting for Tess and her friends to get back from dinner. By then our other 4 roommates had moved in, and one girl was apparently ready for bed because she got off of her top bunk and turned off the lights for the whole room while we were sitting there and one of the other girls was getting ready for bed…. awkward.
There was a bar attached to our hostel so we started the night by grabbing a drink there. We met up with Tess and all of her friends, and they said they knew where we should go out for the night. So all 7 of us split up into Ubers and headed into the nightlife part of the city. It was FREEZING outside so we were not happy to see all of the lines at every bar and club. Every single one had lists, meaning that you can’t get in unless you had an “in” who got your name on the list. Obviously we did not, so we were out of luck at every place and we were really fed up and cold after about 30 minutes of trying. We also found that most clubs, on top of having a list, had an age minimum of 23 or 25+ which was very frustrating. We ended up getting into one bar, and having to pay $25 for one drink!! Total scam. But at least we were finally out of the cold.
We sat and talked for an hour, and by then it was 1am so we were getting tired. We decided to stop at Max Burgers on the way back. (second time for the day lol)
The next morning, we woke up and grabbed breakfast at a bakery called Café Pascal. I got avocado toast with an egg, and we split a Scandinavian pastry called a Semla. We were in a rush to get to the Fotografia Museum so I ate it as we walked to the bus stop.
The bus never came to our stop so we ended up walking, which ended up being a big mistake. The route that we walked was meant to bring us up streets that were high up, and then down a steep spiral staircase that brings you down to the street below. We walked a mile to the end of the long street just to discover that the staircase was closed for construction, so we had to trek the mile back and then a mile on the street below in order to get to the museum. It was a very long walk on a day when we didn’t have much time to spare. We were also carrying our bags since we had to check out of the hotel.
We had heard that the photo museum was really well done and a must-visit so we had prioritized it for the day. After our long walk we were really hoping it would be worth it.
The main museum exhibit was basically a collection of all of the most important photos from different news events around the world throughout history. It was really impactful and well-done, but it was definitely really disheartening and hard to look through. If you think about it, most of the most impactful photos from the news are reporting on devestation and tragedy, so it was like walking through the worst parts of history.
After that, we Ubered to the train station and took the train back to Stockholm airport. Then we went back through the whole process of flying to Malmö, taking a bus to the train station, training to Copenhagen, and taking the metro home. We were both completely exhausted when we got home, since we each had a total of 8 hours of sleep over the last two nights combined. Anna and I both fell asleep while we were sitting at the gate. Luckily we had a beautiful sunset view from the plane and when we landed in Malmö.
Overall, our trip was definitely less fun than we had hoped for, but we were both still glad we went. We discovered that flying out of Malmö, even though it may be cheaper, most likely isn’t worth the amount of travel it takes to get there. We also gained a lot of appreciation for Copenhagen and we were definitely really happy to go back! And we got pretty close and enjoyed traveling together 🙂
