In early September we took our trip to Stockholm, using the pair of SAS flights I won in March. We'd booked a hotel over the internet, using as part payment £300 worth of Thomson vouchers I had won in another competition.

 

Visitors are always told that the best way to see all the sights is to buy a Stockholm Card, which allows free entry to a variety of museums and attractions, also free local bus and subway travel and also boat trips. What we didn't know is that some of these boat trips are seasonal, some being withdrawn at the end of August. We found that, having paid the equivalent of £40 each for our Stockholm Cards, we then had to pay a further charge for some of the boat trips and also for the sightseeing open-top hop-on/hop-off bus. In the end we spent a lot of money needlessly, so the Stockholm Card was not a good idea where we were concerned. We didn't visit any of the museums either, as the weather was warm and sunny and we wanted to see as much outside as possible, not be confined indoors. We did go to the Aquarium and found that very nice. People wanting to visit the museums would have found these cards much more useful than we did.

 

Stockholm is made up of 24,000 islets (we didn't realise that there were that many) and some are very isolated. Nearly everybody there has a boat, though, and they all seem to get around fine. They spend a lot of time on the water, which is hardly surprising.  We both thought our nicest excursions were the 3 boat trips, all of which had a running recorded commentary, via headphones, and you could get this in any language just by changing channels on your individual control box. We learnt a lot about the places we were passing and the history of the buildings , including the Royal Palace (which actually wasn't very imposing, but there was an interesting Viking Ship moored in front of it.)

 

 

The city is well laid-out with lots of well-known shops which we have over here, including  Debenhams, H&M and Zara. I felt quite at home in Debenhams and we twice had a meal in their cafe. Generally food and drink is extremely expensive, as are clothes and anything else you care to mention.

After our 3-day Stockholm Card ran out, we had to use the local buses. This was when we found out that they have a set fare of 20 krona (the equivalent of £1.50) and half that for Seniors. It doesn't matter whether you ride for one stop or go all the way to the terminus, the fare is the same. We really enjoyed just jumping onto a bus and going wherever it was going. We definitely saw a great deal more than ordinary tourists see, even though we sometimes saw large blocks of council flats, an industrial estate, a huge hospital and even the docks where we observed a banana warehouse! Some of the bus drivers looked at us as if we were a bit odd, when everyone else got out at the terminus and we said we just wanted to remain on the bus and go back to the city centre!

 

There are loads of students in Stockholm and we were a bit surprised at their choice of clothes, including what in this country would be called 'gothic' and with body piercing in the strangest places. Some of the girls had dyed their hair every colour you could imagine. One day we spotted a man walking down a street wearing a white toga and a laurel wreath on his head,  with a small Swedish flag tucked into it. We thought this hilarious. We were on a bus at the time, otherwise it would have been great to take a photo.

At the end of our holiday, we worked out what we had spent in meals (other than breakfast which was included in the hotel rate), bus and boat fares, the Stockholm Cards, taxis to and from the airport and a few post cards and stamps. This amounted to £565, so it was not exactly a cheap trip, but would have been a lot dearer had I not won the flights and the Thomson vouchers. Also we visited a place (very beautiful) where we wouldn't normally have gone.