Stockholm

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Sweden Summer, Part Two: Stockholm from Shipwrecks to SkyView

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

Gamla Stan from the bridge to Skeppsholmen

C and I slept well and woke up early, so I felt my plan to beat jet lag was working. It was overcast and raining slightly as we set out. I had been watching the forecast carefully because we had two more days in Stockholm: one for museums and one with more time outdoors. The rainy day was clearly the day to visit the museums on Djurgården.

We set out through a light mist, planning to walk the roughly 30 minutes to Djurgården and take the ferry back. Google Maps led us from Gamla Stan onto Skeppsholmen, the neighboring island. The bridge was lovely, with a beautiful view back across the water toward Gamla Stan. Skeppsholmen itself was green and surprisingly hilly, with several lovely old buildings. We walked up a rise and down the other side, following the map toward Djurgården. Only when we reached the water did I realize that the route ahead was a ferry, not a continuation of our walk.

The ferry was approaching, so we got on. Unfortunately, it was headed back toward Gamla Stan. We stayed aboard and rode it back toward Djurgården, stopping a second time at Skeppsholmen along the way. The unexpected detour gave us a chance to see the islands from the water, and the approach to Djurgården was particularly nice. The ferry landed right in front of Gröna Lund, Sweden’s oldest amusement park, and from there we headed for the Vasa Museum.

Although we had woken up early, we had not left quite as early as I had planned, and I had not expected the Vasa Museum to attract such a crowd on a weekday in August. The line stretched up the rise toward another museum. Rather than join it immediately, we sat down for fika. C had hot chocolate and a snack, and I had tea and a cinnamon roll—a Swedish invention and one of Sweden’s great contributions to the world. It was fantastic, and the first of many I would enjoy on this trip. When we finished, the line had hardly changed, so we decided to visit the Wreck Museum first.

C outside the Vrak Museum

Vrak, or the Museum of Wrecks, is an award-winning interactive museum on the Djurgården waterfront (it was a finalist for the European Museum of the Year Award in 2024 and won Sweden’s Museum of the Year Award in 2026). It is housed in a World War II-era boat hangar. We took few photos inside because we were too busy with the exhibits: a VR dive that let us search an underwater wreck, an immersive film telling the Baltic Sea’s story, and holographic images of objects from the wreck of a 17th-century ship. We learned not only about famous Swedish wrecks, but also about how people search for them and salvage objects from them. It was quite cool, and we really enjoyed it.

After visiting Vrak, we returned to the Vasa Museum. The line was significantly shorter, and I am so glad we visited the museums in that order. Vrak may have won awards, but after seeing Vasa, nothing could compare. As soon as we walked in, there was the ship towering before us. It took my breath away. It was several stories high—an entire seventeenth-century warship standing inside a building—and its craftsmanship and carvings were gorgeous. I was enthralled.

Vasa was built at Stockholm’s navy yard between 1626 and 1628. It set sail on its maiden voyage on August 10, 1628, but after about 20 minutes began taking on water and sank. Only a little way into our visit did it occur to me that we were there on August 10—398 years to the day after Vasa set sail. That felt extraordinary, and I wondered whether the anniversary might have helped explain the size of the crowd that morning. The ship was raised in 1961, after 333 years underwater, and more than 98 percent of its original structure survives.

The museum is built around the ship and tells so much more of its story: the people who built and sailed it, life aboard, its brief maiden voyage and sinking, and its eventual discovery and salvage. We spent probably three hours there and left only because we were hungry. We could have stayed longer, and I think even C could have stayed a while more—though perhaps not quite as long as I would have. It is one of the most incredible museums I have ever visited.

Just some of the magnificence of the ship Vasa

Motivated by food, C and I left Djurgården behind. We had considered the ABBA Museum, which sounded fun, but the reviews I read suggested it was small and pricey. After seeing Vasa, I was good, and C was as well. We were tired after a good four hours of museuming. We walked back across the bridge to the mainland and had lunch at an Italian restaurant in the elegant Östermalm neighborhood. Afterwards, we meandered through the streets back to our hotel in Gamla Stan. We had had such a busy first day, followed by another busy day, that I did not want to pack anything else in. We needed time to rest and reflect on what we had done so far.

We woke early on our third day in Sweden to head to Stockholm City Hall for a tour of its tower. Completed in 1923, Stockholm City Hall sits on the northern shore of Riddarfjärden, a broad stretch of Lake Mälaren in central Stockholm. The building has hosted the annual Nobel Prize banquet since 1930.

Although it is called a tower tour, it is not guided. The tower is open to visitors only during the summer months, and the number of people admitted during each 40-minute block is limited. We were given 10 minutes to climb, 20 minutes at the top, and 10 minutes to descend. At 348 feet high, the tower offers a panoramic view over central Stockholm. It was a bright, gorgeous morning, and although it was windy at the top, we had a tremendous view across the water and several of the islands that make up Stockholm, including Gamla Stan.

Stockholm City Hall and the view from the tower toward Gamla Stan

Just a two-minute walk from City Hall was the departure point for our boat to Drottningholm Palace. The trip took about an hour, winding among the large islands and narrow waterways of Lake Mälaren. I was surprised to learn that we were traveling on a lake at all. It looked much more like a network of rivers than any lake I had seen before.

The boat was crowded, and all the seats on the upper deck were taken. Given how chilly it was on the water, however, I was quite happy for C and me to huddle on benches near the snack bar inside, stepping outside whenever I wanted a better look at the view. We also took advantage of the snack bar for a morning fika. I had my second cinnamon roll of the trip, and it was every bit as delicious as the first.

As we drew closer to Drottningholm, I went outside to watch our approach. Arriving at the palace by water is spectacular. Its sunny yellow façade appeared ahead of us against a startlingly clear blue sky, and even before we docked, I could see why the royal estate had been named a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Drottningholm is Sweden’s best-preserved royal palace from the 1600s and remains the home of the Swedish king and queen. Because it is still a functioning royal residence, only part of the palace is open to visitors, and, as at the Royal Palace in Gamla Stan, it did not take us particularly long to walk through the available rooms. I loved the building itself. Inside, however, I discovered that I apparently have a much higher tolerance for grand architecture than for gilded interiors. After a certain number of royal residences, one lavish room begins to blur into the next.

Once outside, I connected with Drottningholm in a way I had not inside. The gardens were still carefully shaped and unmistakably royal in scale, but they felt like a place to explore rather than a collection to admire from behind a rope. The palace and grounds were French-inspired and borrowed heavily from French Baroque design, making the connection to Versailles easy to see. Yet Drottningholm, though one of Sweden’s top tourist attractions, did not come with the crowds found at Versailles. The farther we wandered from the palace, the fewer visitors we encountered.

My favorite part of the grounds was the Chinese Pavilion and the quiet area surrounding it. I particularly liked the long path lined with chestnut trees and the views across the open spaces framed by long rows of trees. Tucked away a substantial walk from the main palace, the pavilion felt far enough removed to serve as the royal family’s getaway from the big house. It began as a birthday gift from King Adolf Fredrik to Queen Lovisa Ulrika in 1753—because what do you give a queen who already lives in a palace? A vacation mini-palace, apparently. European royalty at the time was a bit obsessed with all things Chinese, and that enthusiasm carried through not only the architecture but also the wallpaper, furnishings, and decorative details inside. Having spent quite a bit of my own life living in, working in, and traveling through China and elsewhere in East Asia, I could understand their interest.

The dining pavilion at Drottningholm’s Chinese Pavilion

We had lunch at the Palace Café and then, rather than returning by boat, took a bus and the subway to the Avicii Arena in southern Stockholm. We were there to ride SkyView, a one-of-a-kind attraction—the only one in the world—in which a clear, spherical gondola crawls up the outside of the Avicii Arena, the world’s largest spherical building.

We arrived at the SkyView ticket counter at 3:15 p.m. only to learn that a group of more than 100 people had booked several rides just before us. There are only two gondolas, each holding 12 people, and a complete ride, including boarding, takes about 25 minutes. The next available tickets were for 5:30 p.m. We had nothing else planned for the day, and the Avicii Arena is next to a shopping mall, so we bought the tickets and headed to the mall to look around.

There, we discovered Normal, a super-fun non-pharmacy drugstore. It was sort of like CVS in the United States, but with a cute, maze-like layout, colorful displays, and lots of delicious imported snacks and sweets. Exploring Normal and enjoying some more fika helped the time pass quickly.

Finally, it was our turn to board SkyView. We were supposed to watch an introductory video first, but someone forgot to show it to us. No matter. We went directly into the gondola, where only two other passengers joined us.

The gondola slowly crawled up the side of the arena until it reached the top, 130 meters, or about 425 feet, above sea level. It paused there for a few minutes so that we could take in the view. The immediate surroundings were more residential and commercial than picturesque, but beyond them Stockholm spread out below us, and we could see toward Gamla Stan and the historic center. It was another gorgeous, clear afternoon; on a cloudy day, I doubt the view would have been quite as spectacular. SkyView was one of those special activities to check off the list—something we could do nowhere else in the world.

Left: A gondola travels along the side of the Avicii Arena; Right: C looks out at Stockholm from inside a gondola at the top of the Avicii Arena

Afterwards, we returned to the subway and rode back to Gamla Stan. We picked up a few things from the supermarket to make dinner in our room. Once again, C remained at the hotel while I took one more late-afternoon spin through the gorgeous streets of Gamla Stan. Then I returned to the room so that we could both prepare for the next day, when we would leave Stockholm for our next destination.

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Sweden Summer, Part One: Planning and Arrival in Stockholm

Crossing from the island of Stadsholmen, where Gamla Stan is located, to the mainland; Weather on our first was fabulous.

Late last year, only a few months after our wonderful summer road trip through Kosovo, Albania, and Montenegro, I began thinking about where C and I might go the following summer. The Balkans had been C’s idea and, delighted by how well that trip had turned out, she was keen to see another part of Europe. Italy initially rose to the top of the list, but the thought of traveling there during the heat of August gave me pause. A few years earlier, after a DNA test estimated that C was around 10 percent Scandinavian, she had expressed an interest in learning more about Sweden and visiting someday. August also seemed one of the best times to go. And with that, we had our destination.

Once I settled on Sweden, I began imagining how we would travel through it. I love traveling by train and have fond memories of rail journeys in China, Australia, New Zealand, and across Europe, as well as our more recent cross-country trip from Chicago to Los Angeles. Sweden seemed like an ideal place to build an itinerary largely around train travel. We would ultimately take a little bit of everything, but this would not be another self-drive trip. To make it easier to board trains and walk between stations and hotels, C and I would also leave our suitcases at home and travel with backpacks.

Sweden has a reputation for being expensive, and when I backpacked through Europe in my twenties, I largely avoided Scandinavia and other places where my limited budget would not go very far. More than two decades later, I could finally make Sweden happen, but I still wanted to keep the costs under control. I booked our plane tickets using miles, chose relatively inexpensive accommodations, and used hotel points for about a third of our stays.

Using miles meant accepting a less-than-ideal itinerary: Dulles to Rome, Rome to Munich, and finally Munich to Stockholm. Two connections were not ideal, but since I was paying little more than the taxes, I went with it. Then the war with Iran began, oil prices rose, and I started hearing about shorter flights within Europe being cancelled. I worried that one of our European flights might disappear. I figured that once we were in Europe, we could always take a train—but Rome is a very long way from Stockholm, and getting there by rail would have taken days and unraveled much of our carefully planned itinerary.

Then, in May, the trip faced a far more personal threat when I developed a debilitating case of sciatica. For three days I could barely get out of bed, and for a time I struggled to walk even with a cane. This was not going to be a relaxing beach holiday; our plans depended upon my being able to carry a backpack, walk between train stations and hotels, and spend full days sightseeing. I became genuinely worried that I would not be physically capable of taking the trip at all.

By August, however, none of our flights had been cancelled and, although I had not fully recovered, I had recovered enough to go. I would ultimately do remarkably well in Sweden, but I did not know that when we arrived at Dulles. I was simply thrilled that after months of worrying about whether the trip would happen, C and I were finally on our way.

Storkyrkan or the Stockholm Cathedral bathed in late afternoon light of our first evening

Or so I thought.

Nine minutes before boarding, United apparently discovered that our flight did not have pilots. Storms had snarled air traffic that day, leaving our assigned crew stranded elsewhere. United announced a two-hour delay, but two and a half hours passed before we finally took off. We had only a three-hour layover in Rome. It did not look good.

Before takeoff, one of the pilots walked through each section of the plane to apologize. He told us that he thought he could make up nearly an hour during the flight. Everyone cheered—and he did it. We landed in Rome shortly after 3 PM, leaving us about an hour and a half before our next flight departed.

We followed the signs for transit, passed through immigration to enter the European Union, and then somehow found ourselves all the way outside the secure area. We had to go upstairs, pass through security again, and find our gate. By then, we were running. A good portion of the plane had already boarded when we arrived, but we made it.

Our flight from Munich to Stockholm also departed about 40 minutes late. Instead of arriving just before midnight, we landed closer to o-dark-thirty and did not reach our airport hotel until 1 AM. It had been a very long journey, but we were finally in Sweden.

Knowing that we would arrive late, I had planned for us to spend our first night at a hotel near the airport. We arrived even later than expected, but after a good night’s sleep, we were up early and ready to begin our first full day in Sweden. We returned to the airport and took a bus into central Stockholm. The train would have been faster, but shortly before the trip I learned that the bus cost roughly a third as much. Given that we were not in any particular hurry that morning, the bus won.

The grand west staircase in Stockholm’s Royal Palace

From Stockholm Central Station, we walked toward Gamla Stan, Stockholm’s historic old town. Stockholm began to take shape there in the 13th century, and the district still retains its medieval lanes and street pattern. Many of the buildings seen today, however, date from the 16th through the 18th centuries, with much of the architecture reflecting the Swedish Empire period.

I very much wanted us to stay in Gamla Stan. I loved the idea of being able to step outside and wander its old cobblestone streets early in the morning or later in the evening, after many of the tourist hordes had departed. I have stayed in the historic centers of several cities and find something extraordinary about briefly feeling as though those streets are also part of my neighborhood.

Our accommodations were simple: a small room with two twin beds and a shared bathroom, the only one we would have during the trip. It was C’s introduction to one of the “joys” of backpacking—accepting fewer amenities in exchange for a central location at a price that did not break the bank. We would be just steps from history, although, honestly, it is difficult not to be steps from history in Stockholm.

Even better, although we arrived well before the usual check-in time, our room was already ready. We dropped off our backpacks, turned around, and headed straight back out. Our first stop was the Royal Palace.

The Royal Palace was just a hop, skip, and a jump from our modest accommodations. The area outside the palace and neighboring cathedral was already full of people, and as we approached, C spotted three Scouts sitting at the base of a nearby statue. “Let’s go talk to them,” I said, at which point C promptly disappeared around the corner of a building while I went over to introduce myself. I learned that they were British Scouts on a Scouting holiday in Sweden and had spent the previous week on an island with some Swedish Scouts. It seemed like a pleasant but incidental encounter at the time. Later in our trip, however, it would make a significant difference.

The front facade of the Royal Palace during my golden hour walk of our first evening

Like much of Gamla Stan, the Royal Palace has medieval bones beneath its Baroque exterior. We opted for a self-guided tour through the 23 lavishly decorated state rooms open to visitors—a small portion of a palace with more than 600 rooms. I am always struck by the layout of old palaces, where one room opens directly into the next, whether a bedroom or dining room, rather than onto a hallway. The palace felt to me like an urban Versailles, while its location in the old city reminded me of Luxembourg Palace. C and I spent about an hour wandering through the rooms but opted not to visit the Treasury.

Just across from the palace stands Stockholm Cathedral, its warm, peach-colored Baroque exterior concealing a church whose history stretches back to the 13th century. It is the oldest church in Stockholm and served for centuries as the coronation church for Swedish monarchs. Among its treasures is the striking wooden sculpture of Saint George and the Dragon, dating from 1489. Of all the cathedrals I have dragged C to over the years, I had never seen her take such an interest in one. She really took her time looking around and seemed to enjoy it even more than the palace.

After leaving the cathedral, we crossed one of the bridges linking Gamla Stan to the rest of central Stockholm. I had promised C that we would visit the shopping area, although this was not exactly how I had envisioned spending our first day in Sweden. She particularly wanted to visit Brandy Melville. Never mind that there is a Brandy Melville in Georgetown that she visits regularly; this was the first and only Brandy Melville in Sweden, and she hoped to find some Sweden-specific merchandise. Unfortunately, the last of it had sold that very morning, only hours before we arrived. Still, she was happy to have gone. We continued along the shopping streets, stopped for a few nibbles, and then returned to our room for a short rest.

Later, we headed to the Nobel Prize Museum on Stortorget, Stockholm’s oldest square. The museum is housed in the former Stockholm Stock Exchange Building, constructed in the 1770s and now also home to the Swedish Academy, which selects the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature.

For visitors, the entire museum is on one floor, and that floor also includes the entrance, the information and ticket desk, a café, and the museum shop. That does not leave all that much space for exhibits. One of the museum’s more unusual features is that Nobel Prize recipients are asked to donate a personal item that reflects their journey. Some of their choices are certainly interesting. Among the objects we saw were a jar of peanut butter and a pair of nail clippers, both of which we found especially odd. Overall, C and I were amused, but not particularly engaged, and we stayed for less time than I had expected.

The stunning Stortorget, meaning “Great Square.”

Afterward, we had dinner at a restaurant on Stortorget. C was ready to return to our room, while I took advantage of the golden hour to walk the streets of Gamla Stan by myself and take photos after the crowds had thinned. My solo walk also gave me time to take stock of our day. After all my worries that the trip might not happen—or that I might not be physically able to manage it—we had made it. I had walked nearly 25,000 steps, and we had seen so much on our first day. Our summer trip to Sweden was off to a great start.