SWEFIN Day 5 - Stockholm to Helsinki 🫐

Ellie here! Today was another travel day and time to check out of our hotel. We dropped our bags with reception after another yummy breakfast and headed out. Time to do some island hopping.

Fun fact! There are 14 islands and 57 bridges in Stockholm. That’s not many islands in comparison to the whole of Sweden, which has well over 200,000. You can imagine Henning’s face when I told him this!

Skeppsholmen was the first island we reached and it followed a long walk through the city and over a bridge, so we stopped for a while looking at the boats before moving further into the island. There was some find of colourful modern art installation that neither of us could make much sense of. It seemed vaguely suggestive but not enough that children would have to avert their eyes. It was the combination of the brightly coloured women and the very old machinery that perplexed me.

Another bridge took us to the smallest of the islands we would see: Kastellholmen. It was basically a park with a few houses and a castle on top. A baby castle! It looked new to me but Barry informed me it was built in 1846. It was a great view from the castle over the water and we could also see and hear the theme park (one which we are not visiting this time!) on the next island.

New mode of transport alert! Time to catch a ferry. It was really easy to hop on and seemingly free to use as when we tried to show our general transport tickets, he just waved his hand and said “welcome aboard”. We all loved the ride. The ferry took us back toward the city on its circular route and then back toward the theme park island: Djurgården.

Djurgården is much bigger and full of lush, green parks once you get past the crowds around the them park and the ABBA museum! We took a picture of the ABBA museum for my mum but didn’t go inside, sorry!

We had planned to go into a part of the park that had another little zoo in it, like Gothenburg did, but we quickly realised we would need to pay a fair amount each and so we sat together, sheltering from the rain that had just started to fall and scheming about what we could do instead.

We realised that most of the park is free to enter so we walked around to another entrance and quickly found a hedge labyrinth that was very muddy inside. Barry led the way and I traipsed after, hopping over puddles and hoping we didn’t get stuck as I was starting to get peckish.

Freed from the labyrinth, we wandered past beautiful flower and herb gardens and saw that a cafe had nestled itself in the middle of the park in a greenhouse. The food was laid out beautifully inside, you just picked up what you fancied and paid at the till. Barry went for a sandwich but I was drawn to a bowl of humous and pickled veggies with some lovely brown bread to dip. It was very glorious. We also topped it all off with a cardamom bun each and some locally made apple juice, and were feeling very pleased with ourselves! It was a lovely setting and even when it rained on us, we were just glad to be there.

Feeling refreshed, we found our way out of the park and onto a tram that went straight into the centre of Stockholm so that we could have a rest in the lobby of the hotel before collecting our bags. We did get slightly distracted in the shopping mall as there were a couple of shops I wanted to look in but I only got a couple of masks (one to pamper my feet hoping they magically don’t hurt any more!). Barry went and found the government’s alcohol shop (in Sweden this is the only way to get alcohol in shops that’s above 3.5%) which he says was extremely classy and the attendants were all wearing bow-ties.

After a rest stop and a quick change of clothes, we headed to the train station and caught the Arlanda Express to the airport, had a quick dinner and boarded a flight to Helsinki! A whole new country which we’re very excited to explore. The plane was very small (it had had propellers!) and served us blueberry juice, which we thought was marvellous.

On arriving into Helsinki, we caught another train into the middle of the city. By now we had jumped an hour and it was midnight here and after a long day of exploring and travelling, we couldn’t wait to get into bed!

Helsinki city centre on a Friday night was absolutely abuzz with nightlife and music. The sky had just a hint of light in it still and everyone certainly seemed to be making the most of it. I was just relieved when we saw Marski Hotel come into view as my rucksack was wreaking havoc again!

Finally it was time to get into bed in the fanciest room so far! I was a bit desperate for a shower but the bathroom flooded almost immediately so I would have to see what reception could do about it tomorrow and instead, drifted into a dreamless sleep.

See you tomorrow, Helsinki!