Stockholm 4 1/2 day Itinerary Suggestions

While I highly recommend the ferry to Helsinki and love Helsinki, if all she has is 4 1/2 days, that may not be enough time. It doesn't make sense to fly back. The ferry is so cheap and covers a night's costs that flying just adds to the costs. So she'll need one full day and it eats time out of each day before and after. She'll need to decide if that leaves enough time for Stockholm for her. For a college-age person, I'd recommend the Viking line. There are so many guidebooks out there that not having one is a very bad idea and excuse. If you can't find them locally, there is this thing online called Amazon.com. She really needs to decide her interests and how she wants to spend her time. 4 days is plenty of time to see all those things. The order of doing so has more to do with efficiencies of seeing things adjacent to each other. For that a good map is helpful. Stockholm also has an excellent TI center called Sweden House on the Kungstradgarden. That should be her first stop on arrival.

We just purchased the DK Eyewitness Travel for Stockholm and the Streetwise Stockholm Map from Amazon. We will be in Stockholm/southern Sweden for 10 days in the fall prior to a Baltic Cruise. There is so much to see right in Stockholm! We were there for three days about 10 years ago and can't wait to explore more. I love the DK guides as I am a visual person and find their top picks, graphics, photos and maps /walks very useful. We have many of their Europe guides along with the Rick Steves guides. If she's a fan of "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo" books there are walking tours of that Södermalm neighborhood across from Gamla Stan. I don't know if I'm allowed to link, but it's easy to google. Good article on the telegraph.co.uk website,
"Stockholm on the trail of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo".

I took a ferry from Tallin across to Helsinki and really enjoyed it.... BUT if you only have 4 1/2 days in Stockholm I think I'd skip the ferry to Helsinki, it would just involve too much time on a big boat. There are several ferry routes from Stockholm to the Archipeligo islands. When I was in Stockholm I rode the ferry out to Vaxholm, its only about a 1 hour ride, Vaxholm has a small community so there are several little shops and restaurants, and a very nice walking path circling the island. But there is a wide variety of island destinations in the Archipeligo. I would just check with the TI office and decide how long you want spend on the ferry (although the scenery is wonderful so the ferry ride is very fun), and what kind of a destination you're most interested in (remote, wildlife, solitude, castle, ruins, fortresses, food, etc), and take a day trip out from Stockholm. I really enjoyed Skansen, but it depends if you like outdoorsy museums or more formal artsy museums. Skansen is part outdoor folklife museum, part zoo, and part beautiful gardens, with some very nice views of the city thrown in! But there's a lot to see, so it can take a fair amount of time. When I was there I was staying north of the train station a few blocks, so I was easily able to combine walks through Gamla Stan and some of the gardens on my way to and back from the ferries to Vaxholm and Skansen. I don't know if there's a "best" order, seems like things are relatively compact and close together, so you should be able to combine different things on different days, just depending on how much time and energy she has.

Many thanks to all of you for your good suggestions and advice. I enjoyed the videos too. It was very helpful. She is on her way and we were fortunate to find Rick Steve's Snapshot of Stockholm to add to the other guide books.