Trip Report: Stockholm + Gotland, Sweden Aug 2024

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We finally made our way to the Hallwyl House, as recommend to me on this forum. Hallwyl House is a historic mansion-turned-museum, showcasing the lavish late 19th-century interiors and extensive art collections of the aristocratic von Hallwyl family. What makes Hallwyl House particularly unique is its well-preserved interior, which has been kept almost exactly as it was when the family lived there. The Countess von Hallwyl, was an avid collector of Dutch baroque art, furniture, and various swords/weapons from around the world. The most interesting part for me was the modern bathroom installed in the early 20th century, one of the first in Sweden, it looks not too different from our own bathrooms nowadays.

Afterwards, we ate at nearby Restaurang Prinsen, another recommended stop with a reputation of old world service. Yes, the service was impeccable like the waiters of old Europe, unfortunately the food was also from old Europe so not too memorable, although prepared very correctly. I had veal with carrots and potatoes with a huge dollop of herbed butter, very rich. The cocktails on the other hand were excellent, I enjoyed my lingonberry Negroni.

After we split up for the afternoon and I made the 10 min walk to the Swedish Army Museum, set in a very impressive artillery school. The museum collection itself was very extensive and exhausting, I think maybe too much for the casual tourist. But all very well done with a lot of great expositions from the 1500s to the present where you could actually handle some of the artifacts. I did appreciate they tried to look at war more from a societal perspective rather than just glorification. Unfortunately the gift shop was a letdown, not a lot on offer. I like to collect uniform patches of military units from around the world and they had zero of them in the Swedish Army Museum. The top things I saw were Russian banners captured at Narva, captured city keys of Torun Poland, the smallest gun in the world the “kolibri”, a tunic captured from Peter the Great of Russia, and some artifacts from the current Ukrainian war. Took me about 2.5-3 hrs but I skipped through some parts.

The next day we explore the Gamla Stan more, really not too touristy for being August, still 50% is Swedish heard on the street. We then made the long walk over to the Photography museum, they had a special exhibition of American political artist Shepard Fairey, the creator of the famous Obama "Hope" poster, they had an original printing. The rest of the museum was interesting enough, but I would not put it in the top 5 sites to see in Stockholm, very overpriced for what little they offer.

Later we made the long walk up the cliffs to the Katarina-Sofia district overlooking Gamla Stan. Katarina-Sofia is a kinda the hipster part of town with trendy shops and cafes, especially the SoFo (South of Folkungagatan) area. Honestly this was probably my favorite part of Stockholm, it felt very authentic and energetic, with a lot of interesting “concept” bars and shops.

We ate lunch at Herman’s (my best meal in Stockholm), it’s an all-you-can-eat vegan buffet set in a terraced garden overlooking the old town from across the water, a real hidden gem with stunning views! Great homemade quality food like Lebanese humus or vegan Japanese curry, very a very affordable price. Most of the people there were locals, but a very multi-cultural crowd, with some youth backpacker types as well. Felt like we finally found the “real Stockholm”. Later we explored the area on foot and eventually found ourselves at a very cool outside bar called Woodstockholm set in a lovely square. I had an interesting drink, an “olive lemonade” called Le Tribute, extremely refreshing I ordered two, and they came in these cool glass bottles, interesting they also came from my hometown Barcelona lol!

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Unfortunately, on the same day I had the worst meal in my entire year of living in Sweden at Kvarnen for dinner, a supposedly traditional Swedish restaurant. The restaurant is recommended by Rick Steves and I think actually his Scandinavia tour eats there. Firstly, the whole restaurant was filled with foreigners (a red flag), I didn't hear Swedish once, mainly rowdy Americans, felt like I was at a “frat house” in some American college. We ordered a cured meat tray to start, you can imagine our surprise when we were served Spanish cured meats, like Jamon and Salchichón serve to us, all of terrible quality. Not what my friends traveled to Sweden for. We then ordered the reindeer stew on the recommendation of the waiter. I've had reindeer before in Sweden and it wasn't too bad, however this reindeer stew was little pieces of reindeer very tough and very tasteless, almost inedible like leather, smothered in some kind of heavy cream sauce. It also was very hot at the bottom of the dish while the food on the top was room temperature, which indicated to me it was probably microwaved. On top, the meal was our most expensive in Stockholm, total tourist trap!

Part 2: Gotland (3 Nights)

The next day we traveled to Gotland from Stockholm. We opted for a short 30 min plane flight via a turboprop rather than the 3 hour ferry trip, and were happy to have more time on the island plus as mentioned I get seasick easy. The flight was very nice and smooth with great views of Stockholm. Everyone on the flight was Swedish except for us and an Italian family. What an experience taking the taxi from Gotland airport into the historic town of Visby for the first time, passing through the old town walls and down the cobble stone streets was magical, like being transported back in time. We stayed at Clarion Hotel Wisby, right in the old town, excellent location, nice rooms, we shared the hotel with a business conference from a bid company from Stockholm.

The first afternoon I just went by myself and spent a good two hours just exploring the town of Visby on foot. It was so cool! I was very surprised to find barely any tourists, maybe only encountered 6 groups of tourists in my entire 2 hour walk, very strange in the middle of August. 90% of the languages I heard walking around were Swedish (mostly seemed like locals going about their day), the rest were mostly Germans with a few other nationalities, no native English speakers. There were many times when walking around I felt like I had the whole town to myself, you can see for yourself in the photos I took.

One thing that was quite bothersome were the number of cars that were allowed to drive and park in the historic center, seems like there were no restrictions at all, like in Europe of the 1970s or something. Car after car would zoom past you in the narrow lane, and you had to constantly put your back against the wall to let them pass, on top you were treated with a heavy dose of car fumes as they passed you… yum lol! I had read somewhere that most car traffic was not allowed in the old town. The main square (Stora Torget) was almost always full of cars parked in the centre.

I struck up a conversation with the owner of a board game store in Visby, he was a life long Gotlander, and said it used to be not so bad with car traffic, and is annoying for locals too. He says the situation is that on paper only locals are allowed to drive in the old town for essential traffic, but there is no way to enforce this. Now with the proliferation of AirBnb, many people from outside the island, mainly “Stockholm big shots” as he put it, were renting Airbnbs and then bringing multiple cars to drive around and park in the old town, increasing the congestion of the old town. Over the course of the next few days I saw several license plates from Germany, Denmark, even the UK all parked in the old town.

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Later we ate at Bakfickan, a seafood restaurant on the main square. We shared local smoked shrimp as the entrée, it was a very unique flavor that we had never had, our fingers smelled like smoke the whole night haha. For the main dish I had Baltic flounder. Overall good food quality but very heavy for our Spanish stomachs, I think we all had trouble sleeping at night and skipped breakfast the next day.

The next day we took an English speaking “free” walking tour of the town, the only one offered, it was just us, a French couple and a few Germans, no native English speakers except for the guide who was Scottish. Again I was amazed by how undertouristed the town felt. The tour itself was ok, a little amateurish, it would help to give us a little overview of the town before diving right into the walk. Although Visby is often marketed as a “medieval” town, walking around it didn’t feel like I was in a medieval town. On the outside, especially with the walls it looks medieval, but after a few hours walking around the old town you realize that 90% of the buildings still standing are from the 17-19th centuries. Really, it's a Baroque/Neoclassical town in the footprint of the original medieval town. Not to say it's bad, it's very interesting to see how the early modern city has grown from its medieval shell, but again maybe there were around 5 intact medieval buildings still standing in the whole town.

After the tour, we decided to circle back to a few places we saw, including the Visby Cathedral, which although has its origins in medieval times, a recent renovation in the 2010s left it looking brand new both inside and out. As Studio Ghibli fans, we also poked our heads around some of the locations around Visby that inspired Hayao Miyazaki for his movie Kiki's Delivery Service, we also saw several Japanese tourists doing the same as us. After we went back to the main square and were all kinda tired of the heavy Swedish food by now so we decided to eat at Lulu Poké & Sushi Bar on the main square, perhaps inspired by our Studio Ghibli pilgrimage. It was very interesting as it had nice seating right next to the ruins of a church. Honestly it was quite good and could hold its own with most sushi restaurants I went to back when I lived in Los Angeles.

The afternoon was spent walking the entire length of the Medieval walls, there is a trail lined with apple trees that follows the wall, very atmospheric. There were also several plaques along the route in Swedish and English telling the history of specific sections of the wall. I think we enjoyed it more than the free walking tour we had in the morning. We also stumbled upon a football match of the local division 2 team versus a team from mainland Sweden and watched for some time. Unfortunately the local team was getting their butts kicked so the mood was a little gloomy. Later that evening we went to Lindgården Restaurant it was a very nice atmosphere and vibe, in the garden with lights hanging from trees. I had a very refreshing gin tonic with local fruit. We skipped starters, and went right for the mains I had local lamb (or sheep), which the island is known for. Our best meal on the island.

The next morning the Americans invaded lol! Overnight in the harbor a huge Celebrity Cruise Ship made port. All over town were packs of American tourists toting their oversized daybags and colorful Nike running shoes (like they were going on an urban safari). I must have looked like a local wearing normal street clothes, and was stopped multiple times by Americans asking where the “old town” and “wall” were. On top it was raining so when we tried to visit the Gotland museum it was full to bursting. The museum was interesting, unfortunately the confusing layout of multiple floors, stairways going every which way, shortcuts, longcuts, and multiple dead ends, plus the number of people made the experience less than ideal.

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Thankfully we planned to use the afternoon to explore the island outside of Visby. We actually rented our car from a gas station just outside the old town called OKQ8. We drove south with no particular agenda just using Google maps to look up nearby points of interest. We wanted to see the beach and went to this beach resort area, with a really surreal restaurant called Tofta Beach House, which was decorated in Palm Springs mid century modern décor with waiters in Hawaii shirts and beach shorts. Felt like we could have been in some kind of surrealist short film, especially as outside was raining and stormy. We had coffee and fika in there then continued on our trip. There was a big German family there having an early dinner.

On the way, we saw a bronze age ship tomb called Gannarve Ship Grave, there are many similar ones scattered in Gotland and other parts of Sweden. We then drove down the coast to Eksta Coast Nature Preserve and it was truly glorious as the sun was setting with the rain clouds just dissipating and a few islands just off the coast. This is where local legend has a Danish army landing that went on to take part in the famous Battle of Visby. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves of how beautiful it was, although it was quite windy!

On the way back we got lost trying to follow Google maps back to Visby and passed through many very interesting villages with these fortified medieval churches almost like mini castles. We almost hit a deer crossing the street at one time. By the time we got back to Visby it was 9:30 pm and all the restaurants were closing or closed, a consequence of traveling in Sweden. The American Cruise Ship had also left port already. Unfortunately, our last meal on Gotland was an assortment of snacks from the local ICA. But the adventure of driving back half-lost through the backgrounds of Gotland in the last light of day made up for it I think.

The next morning before our flight back to Stockholm I took another extended 2 hour walk around what felt like the whole city. There was no cruise ship that day, so once again the locals took back their streets and Swedish became the lingua franca. It was magical, barely any tourists felt like I had the whole historic town to myself to explore once again. I guess the moral of the story is in these times of summer overtourism, look north to places like Sweden for an excellent destination, with good weather, decent food, fascinating history, and friendly people all without needing the stand shoulder to shoulder with masses of people like a can of sardines. Thanks for reading, sorry I kinda just wrote a stream of consciousness lol!

Thanks for the great trip report, Carlos! My husband would probably spend several hours in the military museum that you went to. I'm going to bookmark this in case I ever plan a trip to Sweden.

Thank you very much for sharing your experience, it was interesting to read. And as always, I have a few comments or so…

It was really interesting to see all the cute wooden houses/cottages
along the river front, though I was surprised to see so many tall
apartment blocks situated nearby, they really stuck out like a sore
thumb.

This might be a bit nitpicking, but if you want to be technical the houses were on the water front. I don't know where the cruise went, but there are no rivers in or around Stockholm large enough for boats.

While walking through the central part of town we came upon a small
Swedish army military parade of a marching band followed by what
looked like a platoon of Royal Guard in their iconic pickelhaube (see
video in my album).

That's exactly what it was, the start of the changing of the guards at the palace. The new soldiers that will take over the guard duty gather at the army museum (usually) and then march to the palace together with a military band. If you want to look up the details and which band it was you can find it here: https://www.forsvarsmakten.se/sv/var-verksamhet/publik-verksamhet/hogvakten/tid-och-plats-for-hogvakten/ It looked like one of the bands of the Home Guard.

After we split up for the afternoon and I made the 10 min walk to the
Swedish Army Museum, set in a very impressive artillery school.

If you enjoyed the Army museum you should also try to visit the Air Force museum in Linköping and the Naval museum in Karlskrona.

We then made the long walk over to the Photography museum, they had a
special exhibition of American political artist Shepard Fairey, the
creator of the famous Obama "Hope" poster, they had an original
printing. The rest of the museum was interesting enough, but I would
not put it in the top 5 sites to see in Stockholm, very overpriced for
what little they offer.

If you want to get technical, it is a gallery and not a museum. They have no permanent collection and if it's worth it or not depends a lot on what exhibitions they have at the moment. I've seen some great exhibitions there but there have been other times when I've felt that it's not at all worth the money to go there. De gustibus non est disputandum…

Later we made the long walk up the cliffs to the Katarina-Sofia
district overlooking Gamla Stan.

"Real Stockholm" or not, it is a very charming part of Stockholm that is too often overlooked. And if you're interested in "odd" sights, you can walk by Katarina fire station, the oldest fire station in the world that is still in use. There is also a tiny fire fighting museum at the station.

We opted for a short 30 min plane flight via a turboprop rather than
the 3 hour ferry trip, and were happy to have more time on the island
plus as mentioned I get seasick easy.

You should have taken the ferry in my opinion, the view from the ferry as you approach Visby is really hard to beat. And the Baltic sea is usually flat as a pancake in the summer…

The first afternoon I just went by myself and spent a good two hours
just exploring the town of Visby on foot. It was so cool!

The best way to explore Visby in my opinion! It's usually very calm and not so crowded, as long as there are no cruise ships docked…

One thing that was quite bothersome were the number of cars that were
allowed to drive and park in the historic center, seems like there
were no restrictions at all, like in Europe of the 1970s or something.

That is a problem, that has (in my opinion) increased lately. As mentioned cars are in general not allowed inside the wall in the summer, the only ones allowed to drive there are locals (and deliveries, town maintenance, emergency vehicles and so on). But it is hard to enforce. Also, most of the inner city is a pedestrian speed area (what the Dutch call woonerf), so cars have to drive at walking speed and yield to pedestrians, but those rules are not always adhered to… Visby should do something about it.

As Studio Ghibli fans, we also poked our heads around some of the
locations around Visby that inspired Hayao Miyazaki for his movie
Kiki's Delivery Service, we also saw several Japanese tourists doing
the same as us. After we went back to the main square and were all
kinda tired of the heavy Swedish food by now so we decided to eat at
Lulu Poké & Sushi Bar on the main square, perhaps inspired by our
Studio Ghibli pilgrimage.

If you felt inspired by Kiki's delivery service maybe you should have visited a bakery instead? :-)

On top it was raining so when we tried to visit the Gotland museum it
was full to bursting. The museum was interesting, unfortunately the
confusing layout of multiple floors, stairways going every which way,
shortcuts, longcuts, and multiple dead ends, plus the number of people
made the experience less than ideal.

I saw the photos of the picture stones, one of my favourite parts of Gotlandic history. They are very different from the rune stones on the mainland.

On the way, we saw a bronze age ship tomb called Gannarve Ship Grave,
there are many similar ones scattered in Gotland and other parts of
Sweden.

There certainly are, the most famous one is probably outside Slite, according to legend the grave of Tjelvar, the legendary "founder" of Gotland.

On the way back we got lost trying to follow Google maps back to Visby
and passed through many very interesting villages with these fortified
medieval churches almost like mini castles.

It is an island after all, so it's pretty hard to really get lost. Most roads lead to Visby…

By the time we got back to Visby it was 9:30 pm and all the
restaurants were closing or closed, a consequence of traveling in
Sweden. The American Cruise Ship had also left port already.
Unfortunately, our last meal on Gotland was an assortment of snacks
from the local ICA.

There is also a Max outside Österport that is usually open late that might be an option for people wanting food late.

Great trip report, Carlos. I always enjoy your posts. Thanks for sharing so much detail about the museums and local flavor. Loved the ‘big shots from Stockholm’ comment.
Lynda

Loved your report, Carlos!

Thanks everyone for your messages!

If you felt inspired by Kiki's delivery service maybe you should have visited a bakery instead? :-)

Yes, forgot to mention we actually visited the real shop that inspired Miyazaki when he was on Gotland in the 80s for the bakery in Kiki's Delivery Service (picture in the album). It's called Bokcafeet Porten, very cozy place with some local grannies making baked goods in the back, we actually tired that Gotland saffron pancake here, it was more of a pudding though, probably was authentic, not my favorite but glad I tried it.

On the other hand there was a local brand of ice creams you could buy almost everywhere in Visby called GuteGlass, they had a honey saffron flavored ice cream (perhaps based on the traditional pancake?) that was most excellent!

Thanks Carlos, great TR with some new ideas for us, despite having spent a delightful long weekend in Visby. They had a honey saffron flavored ice cream - YUM!

Despite the name, saffranspannkaka is not very thin. It's baked in the oven and usually a couple of cm thick. And served with dewberry jam and cream! Made with rice, saffron and almonds it was an extremely posh dessert a few centuries ago, but not as expensive nowadays. And whether you like it or not (I do!) I think it's one of those things you should try.

Glad to hear you tried GuteGlass, I agree about their honey saffron ice cream! I don't know if it was inspired by the dessert, but saffron is actually grown commercially on Gotland. They also have a great dewberry ice cream. Dewberry is very popular and grows all over the island.