The third installment of my daughter and my August 2026 visit to Sweden.

On the morning of our fourth day, we packed up our backpacks and said goodbye to Gamla Stan. After three nights there, we had grown comfortable. We knew which way to turn when we stepped outside, recognized the streets around us, and had settled into our little corner of Stockholm.

Naturally, that meant it was time to move on.

We walked to Stockholm Central to catch a train to Uppsala. Google Maps led me slightly astray near the station, and we ended up in the wrong place and missed the train I had planned for us to take. Fortunately, this was not much of a crisis. Uppsala is close to Stockholm, trains run frequently, and so I had not bought tickets in advance for this particular trip. We just course corrected, found the train station and departures, and caught the next train.

This was the first of several train journeys we would make as we traveled around Sweden, and it was an easy beginning. We settled in with our backpacks and had a quiet, comfortable, 40-minute ride north to Uppsala.

We arrived in Uppsala, and our accommodation was only about a five-minute walk from the train station. Once again, we got lucky. Even though we arrived around 10:00 in the morning, our room was already available, so we were able to drop our backpacks and settle in right away.

This would be the smallest room of our trip, and it immediately reminded me of the sleeping compartment we had on the overnight train from Helsinki to Rovaniemi in Finland. The room was windowless, but it was perfectly sufficient for our needs. We had bunk beds, a small table that folded down from the wall, and folding chairs that hung on the wall when they were not in use. It was all very compact and very efficiently arranged. Very Scandinavian. We dropped our backpacks, freshened up a little, and headed back out to explore Uppsala.

From our accommodation, it was a quick walk into the center of town, where we crossed the Fyris River for the first time. The river runs right through central Uppsala, crossed by a series of small bridges, and it gives the city a particularly lovely feel. I would end up walking alongside it, or crossing back and forth over it, several times before the day was over.

Our first stop was Uppsala Cathedral. This was not just another pretty European church. Construction began in 1270 and continued until its completion and consecration in 1435. At nearly 119 meters high, it is the largest church in the Nordic countries, and Swedish kings and queens were crowned here from 1441 until 1719.

Inside the cathedral, what stood out most to me were the stained glass and the frescoes. I have come to find that I have a fondness for church frescoes. We saw several beautiful examples in the churches of Kosovo last year. They are beautiful, but I also love the way they tell stories visually. For centuries, they brought biblical stories to life, making them accessible to people who could not read or could not afford books.

The Vasa Chapel was particularly striking. Gustav Vasa and two of his queens are buried there, and the chapel is located at the eastern end of the cathedral, behind the main altar. When we visited, it was bathed in golden sunlight, which made the painted walls and ceiling and the tomb in the center even more beautiful.

From the cathedral, we walked over to Uppsala University. Founded in 1477, it is the oldest university in Sweden and the oldest in the Nordic countries. My daughter is 14 and just beginning high school, so college is still several years away, but she is beginning to think about where she might eventually want to go. Right now, the world is full of possibilities.

We wandered around the campus and stopped at Gustavianum, the oldest surviving building at Uppsala University. It is probably best known for its 17th-century Anatomical Theatre, although we did not go up to see it. What my daughter really wanted was the museum shop. She loves collecting T-shirts from places we have visited, and she was hoping to find one from Uppsala University. Success.

Walking around the university also got both of us thinking a little about the future. What if she actually went to university here someday? And, naturally, that led to what I would do. Maybe I could live in Uppsala too? It was fun to imagine.

After visiting the cathedral and university, it was time for lunch. Earlier, as we were walking through town, my daughter had announced, “I smell burgers. We have to have burgers for lunch.” So we found the interestingly named Bastard Burgers, a Swedish fast-food chain founded just ten years ago. While we were eating, I looked it up and found there was quite a bit more to like about it than just the burgers. The chain is New York-inspired, but very Swedish in its approach, with an emphasis on fresh ingredients, local sourcing, and sustainability. The burgers were some of the best I have ever had from a fast-food chain. C and I both gave it a thumbs up, and it was so tasty, we would visit Bastard Burgers two more times during our time in Sweden.

After lunch, we headed toward the botanical gardens. My original plan had been to visit the Linnaeus Garden and the house where Carl Linnaeus lived while he was a professor at Uppsala University. Linnaeus is one of Sweden’s most famous scientists and is best known for developing the system used to classify and name plants and animals. He became a professor at Uppsala University in 1741 and also took over its botanical garden.

Somehow, though, I managed to end up at a different botanical garden.

This was not entirely as random as it sounds. The Linnaeus Garden was Sweden’s first botanical garden, founded in 1655. By the late 1700s, it had become overcrowded and was also prone to flooding because of its location near the river. In 1787, King Gustav III donated part of the gardens of Uppsala Castle to the university for a new botanical garden. The plants were eventually transferred to the new garden, which opened in 1807.

So I had still found a Linnaeus-related botanical garden. Just not the one I had intended to visit.

We walked through the formal gardens toward the Linneanum, the large building at the far end. King Gustav III also provided money for its construction, and it opened in 1807 as part of the new botanical garden. I had been trying to get there before it closed, so there was a certain amount of determined walking involved.

Once inside, however, it felt strangely empty. With the exception of a succulent greenhouse that had little to make it a standout, there were no other exhibits in the halls and the other rooms were closed. This was quite frankly a let down. After some online sleuthing while we stood there, I discovered it was due to the season. During the summer, many of the plants kept inside had been moved outdoors. We had walked past them outside, and honestly, I had hardly noticed them.

This could not be all there was in a botanical garden with such history! I recalled a sign I had seen directing visitors to the garden’s Tropical Greenhouse across the street. Online information noted it was still open for about another hour and C and I decided to check it out.

As we headed over, I was reading more about the greenhouse and discovered that one of the rooms is home to a colony of poison dart frogs! I kept that little bit of information to myself for a while until we were inside. There I told C. No worries though, poison dart frogs in captivity have a different diet from those in the wild, they are no longer poisonous. So now we had a new goal: find one.

We started searching the room, looking especially around the bases of trees and near the small streams and other damp areas where we thought a frog might be hiding. It took a little while, which made it feel like a scavenger hunt. Eventually, C spotted one near the water. We were both enthusiastic about our find and told other visitors where they could spot it too. C immediately posted that she had found a poison dart frog to her social media. It was an unexpected and very fun addition to our visit.

After leaving the greenhouse, we walked up to Uppsala Castle. The castle has played a prominent role in Swedish history since Gustav Vasa began construction in 1549, and Queen Christina famously abdicated the Swedish throne there in 1654. By the 1600s, it had also become the seat of the regional governor, and the County Governor still has an official residence there today.

Because the castle is still a functioning government residence, there was only so much of it we could see, but the hilltop location made the visit worthwhile. From there, we had lovely views over Uppsala and toward the cathedral, whose twin spires dominate the skyline.

Afterward, I took C back to the room because she wanted to rest for a while. Late afternoon was also a good time for her to catch up with friends back in the United States. I headed back out on my own, much as I had in Gamla Stan. I enjoy getting in some extra walking, and I can move at my own pace, stop for photos as often as I want, and linger over things that C has absolutely no interest in photographing.

I walked the length of the main street and then made my way back along the Fyris River. I stopped for some ice cream and sat outside by the water near one of the bridges. By then it was golden hour again, and Uppsala looked especially pretty in the late-afternoon light.

The Fyris River runs right through the center of town, and Uppsala has grown around it in a way that makes the river feel like part of the city rather than something running beside it. There are mills and reminders of its more practical past, but today the bridges, paths, and buildings along the water make it a particularly lovely place to walk. There were so many beautiful spots that I took many photos.

Before heading back to the room, I stopped at a supermarket and picked up a few things for dinner. Our one day in Uppsala had been very full, but it felt satisfying. The next morning, we would pack up again and head on to our next destination.