Stockholm: day 0 - Friday
or What Dave and Ed did on their holiday
‘So, what brings you to Stockholm?’ our new friend Ludwig asks.
I pause for a moment. There’s a short version, and a long version.
Regular readers will know that I don’t really do short versions.
The long version then.
We need to rewind a little. Don’t worry, Ludwig will be back soon.
[fx: timey wimey shenanigans]
Summer 2022, a warm day in Wakefield. Thoughts turn to holidays. Kate and Lily have been away to Mallorca for a week, and so Ed and I feel we’re due a holiday of our own.
“Where do you fancy going?” I ask.
Ed shrugs.
“Brussels? We can get the Eurostar fairly cheaply and be in Brussels in a couple of hours from London. I’ve found some nice hotels.”
“Maybe.”
‘Maybe’ in Ed’s world means ‘probably not’ so I move on.
“Not Brussels then. Where do you want to go? Somewhere in Europe, preferably somewhere we can get to for a long weekend.”
“Sweden,” he answers. “Always fancied going to Sweden…”
Fair enough. Sweden it is.
I look up how much tickets cost. They’re pretty cheap. Though if we go with Norwegian Air there and back, it means flying on Friday evening and coming back Monday afternoon. Ed’s not keen as it only gives us two full days to explore, so I go back to the websites. I can get us a flight from Manchester to Stockholm on Friday evening dirt cheap. Flying back on Tuesday to Manchester is expensive.
But we don’t need to come back to Manchester. What if we flew back to say, Liverpool?
Sorted. Tuesday morning, 10.45 Stockholm Arlanda to Liverpool with Ryanair. Super cheap, and gives us three full days in Stockholm. I book the tickets, adding on the extra £20 for cabin luggage as I’ve heard that Ryanair are a bit stingy with their baggage allowance.
Then I pause. When I booked the flights going out on Norwegian, I didn’t get the option to add cabin luggage, so assumed it was included. I check Norwegian’s baggage policy.
Oops. One small bag that will fit under the seat in front of you. No more than 30cm by 20cm by 38cm.
I get my ruler out. That’s tiny.
Can I add cabin luggage, I wonder. It appears not. I start measuring the bags we have, and whilst my little rucksack will *just* about fit, I don’t have anything else. Off to Amazon I go and pick up a nice little cabin bag (Ryanair approved!) for £20. It’s marginally over Norwegian’s limits, but is squishy and I’m sure it’ll be fine. I don’t spend several days fretting over this. Nope, not me.
I figure that we’re only going for a few days, won’t need much more than clean socks, pants, t-shirts, kindle, camera and a toothbrush. The bag turns out to be surprisingly spacious in the end and takes all of that and more!
Flights done, luggage sorted, hotel booked (not cheap).
We went for a central location which was a bit more expensive, but didn’t want to be faffing on with public transport getting in and out of the city every day. Turns out this wouldn’t have been a problem, but more on Stockholm’s excellent transport offerings later!
And thus we find ourselves at Manchester Airport on a Friday afternoon in late August. Our flight isn’t until 8pm but we arrive suuuper early (before 5), fearful of the tales of epic queues at security. We head into the terminal and it’s… oddly quiet. We follow the departure signs through a set of doors and are faced with the long, snaking trail of barriers set up to herd passengers in one long, winding queue to the x-ray machines and security guards.
We look at each other and laugh.
The queue at security consists of maybe a dozen people. Including us.
So, we’re through security in all of fifteen minutes and grab a coffee before having a mooch around the shops. This does not take long, so we take ourselves off to Wagamama for some pre-flight sustenance then head down to the gate.
The gate is very very quiet, so we amuse ourselves by watching the planes take off and land, and guess which one will be ours.
Before long, we’re in the queue for boarding (no-one bats an eye at our bags) and take our seats.
The flight is uneventful (always a bonus), and the airline staff are brilliant. One looks remarkably like Daniel Bruhl (maybe he’s between acting roles). The guy in front of us has one hand draped over the top of his seat for the entire flight. We’re concerned that it’ll probably go numb.
I’d looked up how to get from Arlanda Airport to central Stockholm and the common consensus appeared to be ‘just get the Arlanda Express’, which takes 18 minutes between the airport and Stockholm’s Centralstation. Our only concern was that the flight landed at 23.35 and the last train was at just gone 1am. Would we make it in time?
Well, passport control at Arlanda took about ten minutes, and three of those were due to the passenger in front of us not being tall enough to trigger the automatic doors when she’d had her passport checked, so the passport lady had to come out of her booth to open them for her.
We got to the train platform, figured out how to buy tickets and hopped aboard the Arlanda Express. The station appeared to have been hacked out of the rock, which I rather liked.
Ed was very impressed, the seats were spacious and comfy (though some of that could have been because we’d just spent two and a half hours on a small plane), and we were quickly whizzing towards central Stockholm at over 200km/h.
Eighteen minutes later, we arrived at Centralstation and headed out into the warm Stockholm night. A bit of wandering around (no, I wasn’t lost) and we realised that our hotel was up a level from where we were, so back into the station to find an escalator and before long we’d made It to our hotel.
Ed commented that it felt really safe, despite being in the centre of a capital city at midnight on a Friday. People were out having a good time, but they were all fairly cheerful and enjoying themselves. Whereas back home there’d be rowdy bunches of lads, tottering groups of young ladies and police everywhere.
We quite liked Stockholm, we decided.
Our adventures in Sweden will continue soon. Day 1 involved coffee, cake, a giant ship, delicious food and some excellent whisky. Stay tuned!