Day 1: Welcome to Sweden
- The Day Distilled: After enjoying a beautiful park and an interesting history museum, we met our smiling guide and interesting travel buddies, then sloshed through a cold downpour to the cheerful warmth of a delicious group dinner.
- Woman of the Day: Our guide, Ylva. Her full name means She-Wolf Shieldmaiden’s Daughter. You know who’s in charge!
- Ship’s Log: Stockholm was born where freshwater Lake Mälaren is connected to the Baltic Sea via the Slussen locks. The locks have facilitated trade between inland Sweden and all of Europe since the 13th century.
The tour starts at 4... so let's explore!
We spent the morning walking along the water’s edge of Djurgården island, enjoying the flowers and spotting birds nesting among the reeds. We're both (very) amateur birders so it was exciting to see unfamiliar species.
We also visited the Swedish History Museum. The Gold Room and the Viking exhibit were closed for maintenance, but we enjoyed exhibits on Swedish pre-history and medieval church art. Scandinavians are really talented woodworkers! |
Time to meet our guide and group!
We gathered in the hotel restaurant, where our guide, Ylva, shared some Swedish snacks, told us about herself, encouraged us to introduce ourselves, and gave us a sneak preview of the tour to come. We also paired up with our "tour buddies." (For more on the buddy system, see the Rick Steves Tour Basics in the Flotsam & Jetsam section.)
Then it was time for our first orientation walk – in POURING rain. Nobody took photos that afternoon. My jetlag-fogged memory of the walk is gray, cold, and wet: sheets of water flowing down sidewalks, soggy shoes sloshing across flooded streets. |
Fortunately, the evening ended in comfort. We ate our first group dinner in a warm, dry, welcoming restaurant. (Yes, there were meatballs and lingonberries, plus potatoes, cheese, and pickled herring.) Ylva took time to teach us how to eat like a Swede: get a little bit of everything in each bite – rather like a Rick Steves tour.
The rain had cleared by the time we finished dessert, so Ylva led us up to a vantage point where we could see Stockholm's birthplace: the Slussen locks, which have connected the lake and the Baltic at this spot for 800 years. It's not visually stunning, since Stockholm is retrofitting the current infrastructure, but it was fascinating to learn the site's history. For more photos from Day 1, see the slideshow below. |
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