20th Anniversary European Bike Adventure: Day 20, Stockholm
I slept in as much as I could, then rolled out of bed and sllooowwly got ready.. to run! I had packed running shorts and hoped that I might run in the cities we spent more time in (Amsterdam, Oslo, Stockholm), but didn't manage to actually get a run in until day 20, the last full day of our vacation. That one run totally justified me hauling the shorts across 6 countries. (Had I actually remembered I had them, I would have worn them on some of the laundry days, instead of wearing regular shorts without underwear while the laundry was happening. Alas.)
I made it out of the apartment building at 8am, and .. there was NOBODY out there. We hadn't really known what to expect from National Day, but evidently nobody else got up early to run. Or walk. Or drive. There was nobody out on the road.
I did eventually see other people, at first mostly runners, but it was eerie.
I had looked at google maps and had a general plan of where to go, and then realized two blocks in that I'd already made a wrong turn. I'm not good with directions. I was really glad that Matt had been in charge of getting us from London to Stockholm.
It didn't matter, though. I just wanted to run ~3 miles, I didn't particularly care where. After consulting my phone (which I wisely carried with me for maps and as an emergency "oh, shit, I'm lost, Matt, come find me"), I reoriented myself in the direction I originally intended, and just ran. I went down to Gamla Stan again, where I found all the people who were also already up. Turns out all the tourists were awake, but none of the locals. I dodged a bunch of tourists down by the water, turned around when I got to the bottom of a hill I didn't feel like running up, and then headed back to our apartment.
I tried to stay somewhat focused and not stop every 4 seconds to take pictures, so this is the only picture I took.
It was 70 degrees and sunny and it felt so hot and terrible. Turns out, not running for 3 weeks makes running feel really hard. I was afraid of what it meant for my return home to the hell of Texas, that running in 70 degree weather felt so hard.
I got back to the apartment to find Matt had awoken, and after I showered, we were ready to.. go do something!
Honestly I think neither of us wanted to be out doing anything, really, but we felt obligated. We felt like we'd wasted the day before, and now we needed to cram in as much as we could before we left. But really all either of us wanted to do was maybe sprawl out on the couch and take a nap and do nothing.
But we soldiered on! We really didn't know what we were going to do with this day. We had no feel at all for what would be open and what would be closed for the holiday. And from the limited asking around we'd done, it didn't sound like there was A Thing That One Does On National Day. Most people just enjoy not having to work, and maybe go to the lake.
Our tentative plan was to go check out the Djurgården area, and maybe go to Skansen. I didn't even know what "Skansen" was, but allegedly some Swedish royals sometimes made an appearance at Skansen on National Day, so.. why not see if we could see that?
It was a sketchy plan at best, but we were completely over the whole concept of planning. We didn't want to think. But we didn't have anyone to think for us.
We also didn't have bikes! Which meant we got to explore Stockholm's public transportation.
First, though, we wandered down the street, hoping to find something open that would serve us breakfast. We immediately came upon a coffee shop we'd not yet noticed, and had some pastries to get our day started.
Then we found an entrance to the subway just down the street, and headed down.
We took the subway a couple stops down the line to the central station, and got off there to get on a tram.
The tram went all the way out on the island, past Skansen, and we hopped off at the Djurgården stop.
And then .. had no real idea where to go. To be honest, I had no real idea what Djurgården was, just like I wasn't sure what Skansen actually was. I was just in it for walking around and looking at stuff.
So we did! We saw a path that went into the woods, so we set off into the woods.
We found some sheep!
Munchy.
And we spent the next few hours just wandering around, looking at trees and nature and historic things and water.
There were a lot of people out picnicking and walking and riding bikes and being families and couples and just generally enjoying their day off.
Eventually we meandered our way all the way back to the entrance to Skansen, so we decided to check it out.
We had to pay to get in, and we opted not to pay extra to go up on the funicular, but instead tromped our way up the switchbacks to get up to Skansen. Evidently whatever Skansen is, it's at the top of a hill.
And cresting the hill and looking around, I determined that Skansen appeared to be what would happen if you smashed together a renaissance festival, a zoo, and Pioneer Farms. There were booths selling food. There were demonstrations of 19th century Swedish living.
I think this was the top of a belltower? It was all wood.
There was a whole section of livestock.
The most perfect cow. Wearing a collar.
Super flooffoot.
There was a section with local animals like wolves, moose, bears, reindeer.
It was so hot, and all the animals looked so miserable and were panting. We remembered we didn't really like zoos.
And all of that was lovely, but there were also a TON of people, many of them little children, and it was very warm. I mean, it was 80 degrees. But that is very warm for that area, and very warm for people who have lost all heat acclimation over the last 3 weeks.
Climbing up that hill to Skansen got us good views, at least.
Basically after an hour or so, we decided we couldn't handle that many people, that many kids, and that much heat, so we fled.
Plus we were hungry, and not in the mood for expensive novelty food.
We hopped back on the tram, figuring we'd hop off somewhere more central and explore there, hoping to find food. Then we noticed this tram had a stop basically down the street from us, so we decided to just take it back to our neighborhood, since then we could walk home after lunch.
We made a half-hearted effort to find something promising on google maps, but then decided to just walk until we found something.
We found a likely-looking place, but they said we could only have coffee (well, fika). They weren't serving lunch for another 20 minutes. I asked if we could drink coffee for 20 minutes, then order lunch, and they agreed.
So we sat and Matt drank coffee, and we waited. And waited. And waited. It was probably about 40 minutes before they let us order, and we were both pretty starving at that point. (It's not like we showed up at 10am wanting lunch, I think it was around 2:40pm that we finally got to order food.)
Anyway, the food eventually showed up and was delicious, so it ended well.
I got gnocchi.
Matt got a burger.
Then we walked back to the apartment and starting tearing everything down. We did our last loads of laundry (why? we were going home, where we'd just want to wash everything again) and started packing up all our gear. Fortunately with enough cramming, we were able to fit all our stuff, plus 4 panniers each, into our new plastic tubs. And then hold it all closed with a LOT of tape. We really hoped that they wouldn't open these to inspect them once we got to the airport, because we weren't sure they would tape them back up as thoroughly as they needed to be taped in order to stay shut.
All our worldly possessions.
And then we were done. Both done packing and preparing, but also just done. Mentally, physically, emotionally. We didn't want to make anymore decisions. We just wanted to be home, without the intervening 11 hours of flying and 3 hours of layover. Without carrying these plastic tubs to the subway. We wanted to pet our dogs, and sleep in our own bed.
But we had one last night in Stockholm, so we tried to find something really low key, cheap, and easy for dinner. Did I mention that downtown has a ton of nice, fancy restaurants? It has basically no restaurants which are low key, cheap, and easy.
We decided to try the "wander" approach again, and just down the street from us was a little wine bar attached to a hotel. We wandered in and asked if they did a dinner service, something simple, and he showed us the tiny little menu of like 4 things they served at the bar. One of which was a quiche. Sold. Quiche and wine.
While we were drinking our wine and waiting for our food, Matt, who often orates with his hands, demonstratively waved his hand across the table, across my wine, and somehow broke the stem of the glass, pouring wine all over the floor, and my lap and shoes. It was comical and terrible in equal parts. All we could do was laugh and apologize, and offer to pay for a new glass of wine (which they wouldn't hear of).
This was the replacement wine, which survived unscathed.
The quiche was relatively small, so we could easily justify splitting two desserts, and they were both amazing.
This is buttered brioche with pistachio ice cream, and was probably my favorite dessert of the trip. (Sorry, Kex.)
This is a cheese plate.
Then a short walk back up the street to our apartment for our last sleep before we headed back home.
After a farewell tribute to the mustard that we had bought in Kongsvinger, Norway, and had traveled 300 miles with us to Stockholm, adorning many sandwiches along the way.
Total miles for day 20: 0 miles ridden, because we had no bikes (3.13 very slow miles run).
I made it out of the apartment building at 8am, and .. there was NOBODY out there. We hadn't really known what to expect from National Day, but evidently nobody else got up early to run. Or walk. Or drive. There was nobody out on the road.
I did eventually see other people, at first mostly runners, but it was eerie.
I had looked at google maps and had a general plan of where to go, and then realized two blocks in that I'd already made a wrong turn. I'm not good with directions. I was really glad that Matt had been in charge of getting us from London to Stockholm.
It didn't matter, though. I just wanted to run ~3 miles, I didn't particularly care where. After consulting my phone (which I wisely carried with me for maps and as an emergency "oh, shit, I'm lost, Matt, come find me"), I reoriented myself in the direction I originally intended, and just ran. I went down to Gamla Stan again, where I found all the people who were also already up. Turns out all the tourists were awake, but none of the locals. I dodged a bunch of tourists down by the water, turned around when I got to the bottom of a hill I didn't feel like running up, and then headed back to our apartment.
I tried to stay somewhat focused and not stop every 4 seconds to take pictures, so this is the only picture I took.
It was 70 degrees and sunny and it felt so hot and terrible. Turns out, not running for 3 weeks makes running feel really hard. I was afraid of what it meant for my return home to the hell of Texas, that running in 70 degree weather felt so hard.
I got back to the apartment to find Matt had awoken, and after I showered, we were ready to.. go do something!
Honestly I think neither of us wanted to be out doing anything, really, but we felt obligated. We felt like we'd wasted the day before, and now we needed to cram in as much as we could before we left. But really all either of us wanted to do was maybe sprawl out on the couch and take a nap and do nothing.
But we soldiered on! We really didn't know what we were going to do with this day. We had no feel at all for what would be open and what would be closed for the holiday. And from the limited asking around we'd done, it didn't sound like there was A Thing That One Does On National Day. Most people just enjoy not having to work, and maybe go to the lake.
Our tentative plan was to go check out the Djurgården area, and maybe go to Skansen. I didn't even know what "Skansen" was, but allegedly some Swedish royals sometimes made an appearance at Skansen on National Day, so.. why not see if we could see that?
It was a sketchy plan at best, but we were completely over the whole concept of planning. We didn't want to think. But we didn't have anyone to think for us.
We also didn't have bikes! Which meant we got to explore Stockholm's public transportation.
First, though, we wandered down the street, hoping to find something open that would serve us breakfast. We immediately came upon a coffee shop we'd not yet noticed, and had some pastries to get our day started.
Then we found an entrance to the subway just down the street, and headed down.
We took the subway a couple stops down the line to the central station, and got off there to get on a tram.
Click to viewThe tram went all the way out on the island, past Skansen, and we hopped off at the Djurgården stop.
And then .. had no real idea where to go. To be honest, I had no real idea what Djurgården was, just like I wasn't sure what Skansen actually was. I was just in it for walking around and looking at stuff.
So we did! We saw a path that went into the woods, so we set off into the woods.
We found some sheep!
Munchy.
And we spent the next few hours just wandering around, looking at trees and nature and historic things and water.
There were a lot of people out picnicking and walking and riding bikes and being families and couples and just generally enjoying their day off.
Eventually we meandered our way all the way back to the entrance to Skansen, so we decided to check it out.
We had to pay to get in, and we opted not to pay extra to go up on the funicular, but instead tromped our way up the switchbacks to get up to Skansen. Evidently whatever Skansen is, it's at the top of a hill.
And cresting the hill and looking around, I determined that Skansen appeared to be what would happen if you smashed together a renaissance festival, a zoo, and Pioneer Farms. There were booths selling food. There were demonstrations of 19th century Swedish living.
I think this was the top of a belltower? It was all wood.
There was a whole section of livestock.
The most perfect cow. Wearing a collar.
Super flooffoot.
There was a section with local animals like wolves, moose, bears, reindeer.
It was so hot, and all the animals looked so miserable and were panting. We remembered we didn't really like zoos.
And all of that was lovely, but there were also a TON of people, many of them little children, and it was very warm. I mean, it was 80 degrees. But that is very warm for that area, and very warm for people who have lost all heat acclimation over the last 3 weeks.
Climbing up that hill to Skansen got us good views, at least.
Basically after an hour or so, we decided we couldn't handle that many people, that many kids, and that much heat, so we fled.
Plus we were hungry, and not in the mood for expensive novelty food.
We hopped back on the tram, figuring we'd hop off somewhere more central and explore there, hoping to find food. Then we noticed this tram had a stop basically down the street from us, so we decided to just take it back to our neighborhood, since then we could walk home after lunch.
We made a half-hearted effort to find something promising on google maps, but then decided to just walk until we found something.
We found a likely-looking place, but they said we could only have coffee (well, fika). They weren't serving lunch for another 20 minutes. I asked if we could drink coffee for 20 minutes, then order lunch, and they agreed.
So we sat and Matt drank coffee, and we waited. And waited. And waited. It was probably about 40 minutes before they let us order, and we were both pretty starving at that point. (It's not like we showed up at 10am wanting lunch, I think it was around 2:40pm that we finally got to order food.)
Anyway, the food eventually showed up and was delicious, so it ended well.
I got gnocchi.
Matt got a burger.
Then we walked back to the apartment and starting tearing everything down. We did our last loads of laundry (why? we were going home, where we'd just want to wash everything again) and started packing up all our gear. Fortunately with enough cramming, we were able to fit all our stuff, plus 4 panniers each, into our new plastic tubs. And then hold it all closed with a LOT of tape. We really hoped that they wouldn't open these to inspect them once we got to the airport, because we weren't sure they would tape them back up as thoroughly as they needed to be taped in order to stay shut.
All our worldly possessions.
And then we were done. Both done packing and preparing, but also just done. Mentally, physically, emotionally. We didn't want to make anymore decisions. We just wanted to be home, without the intervening 11 hours of flying and 3 hours of layover. Without carrying these plastic tubs to the subway. We wanted to pet our dogs, and sleep in our own bed.
But we had one last night in Stockholm, so we tried to find something really low key, cheap, and easy for dinner. Did I mention that downtown has a ton of nice, fancy restaurants? It has basically no restaurants which are low key, cheap, and easy.
We decided to try the "wander" approach again, and just down the street from us was a little wine bar attached to a hotel. We wandered in and asked if they did a dinner service, something simple, and he showed us the tiny little menu of like 4 things they served at the bar. One of which was a quiche. Sold. Quiche and wine.
While we were drinking our wine and waiting for our food, Matt, who often orates with his hands, demonstratively waved his hand across the table, across my wine, and somehow broke the stem of the glass, pouring wine all over the floor, and my lap and shoes. It was comical and terrible in equal parts. All we could do was laugh and apologize, and offer to pay for a new glass of wine (which they wouldn't hear of).
This was the replacement wine, which survived unscathed.
The quiche was relatively small, so we could easily justify splitting two desserts, and they were both amazing.
This is buttered brioche with pistachio ice cream, and was probably my favorite dessert of the trip. (Sorry, Kex.)
This is a cheese plate.
Then a short walk back up the street to our apartment for our last sleep before we headed back home.
After a farewell tribute to the mustard that we had bought in Kongsvinger, Norway, and had traveled 300 miles with us to Stockholm, adorning many sandwiches along the way.
Total miles for day 20: 0 miles ridden, because we had no bikes (3.13 very slow miles run).