My wife and I are planning a long weekend in Stockholm next spring. Our flights and hotel are booked (both cancellable/refundable). A very rough itinerary is sketched out below. I've pre-ordered Rick's Stockholm guide (the latest version comes out in a month), but I'd appreciate any feedback. We've traveled quite a bit in Europe, but never before in Sweden.
Arrive at ARN at 12:45 p.m. on Saturday. We'll plan to take the FlixBus or Flygbus to the city center (these appear to be significantly cheaper than the express train, without taking all that much longer). We are staying at the Story Hotel Riddargatan (which includes a full breakfast). We'd like to do one low-key thing this afternoon (like visiting a museum), followed by walking around and dinner. I understand that best case scenario is that we are in the city by 2:30 or 3:00, and we are planning to be flexible here given that this is a travel day. We've been to Europe many times and we have always been "productive" on our first day there, even coming off a redeye.
Between Sunday and Monday, we'd like to do one full day in Stockholm and at least a partial day trip to Uppsala (which looks like a relatively short train ride away from the Stockholm central train station). It appears more things are closed in Uppsala on Monday than Sunday (like the Uppland Museum), so my thought was to go to Uppsala Sunday morning, come back to Stockholm in the afternoon, and then spend the rest of Sunday afternoon/evening and all day Monday in Stockholm. I'm aware of our time constraints, but Uppsala looks particularly accessible and interesting to me, so we'd really like to get there.
We depart ARN at 1:40 p.m. on Tuesday. I was hoping we'd have time for one more thing (relatively close to our hotel) that morning, before taking a bus late morning back to the airport. It may be that the "one more thing" is simply walking around the city more, which is totally fine if nothing is open early enough for another museum/etc. But if anyone has an idea on something that opens or starts up early enough (like 8:30 or 9:00), I'd be all ears.
Our must-dos are the Vasa Museum and Skansen (which both appear to be a short walk from our hotel), as well as just walking around and exploring the city. I think we'd like to get out into the archipelago a little bit, but I am concerned, given our time constraints, about doing a 3 or 4 hour tour. Are shorter tours available? Or if not, maybe we can take a commuter ferry to another island for a little while? For those who have been there, is Drottningholm Palace worthwhile (again, given our time constraints)? Having been to Versailles, Schonnbrunn, and some other royal palaces, I just don't know if we are better served staying in Stockholm proper.
Again, other than the flights and hotel, everything is preliminary. Any advice or suggestions would be great. Thank you in advance.