Land of the Moose

When I say Sweden is the land of the moose, I’m not kidding. Literally EVERY souvenir shop is filled mostly with moose related merchandise. My friend Fav, who was also on this weekend trip with me, was ecstatic once she realized how dedicated Sweden is about their moose. Her favorite animal is the moose, so you can just about imagine how many things she bought this weekend. She even talked Paige and I into buying stuffed animal moose with her so we would all be matching (Zach could not be convinced to buy a moose though). Now, our weekend wasn’t completely about moose (though Fav would have been perfectly content with that), we were able to explore the city quite thoroughly as well!

For this trip we had purchased a Stockholm City Pass, and a 72 Hour Travel Pass which were complete lifesavers (seriously if you ever go to Stockholm, buy these). The City Pass allowed us entry into almost every museum and main attraction that Stockholm had to offer, while the Travel Pass gave us access to any form of public transportation.

We arrived in Stockholm, Sweden on Friday morning without a whole lot planned because we didn’t want to activate our City Passes until Saturday. We did however, find a Ghost Walk Tour that seemed very interesting so we booked that for the evening. Our main goal when we landed was to figure out public transportation since we would be using it a lot with our Travel Pass. We budgeted a good chunk of time since public transportation had been a struggle in the past, but we quickly realized when we got there how much easier Stockholm would be to navigate! Almost everyone spoke English there, and many signs that were in Swedish had English translations right below it. Being able to communicate with locals effectively was so relieving since we hadn’t been able to do that in awhile. The Ghost Walk Tour was super entertaining and we got to learn quite a bit of Stockholm's "dark" history, which was very interesting since we usually don't learn that kind of history in classes back home.

The next day we woke up bright and early to go to the Skansen Open Air Museum. We chose a great day for it too because it was actually fairly warm out and the next day was windy and miserably cold! Skansen was the world's first open-air museum, which basically means the whole thing is outside. The museum in a collection of buildings and dwellings between the 16th century and the first half of the 20th century. It was neat to take a look into historical Swedish life. Skansen also has a zoo which features wolves, seals, and most importantly, moose. It was so cute to see Fav see her first moose in person. She was so excited and captivated by them and we stood by that exhibit for a very long time. (We even came back a second time so that Fav could see them one last time) We ended up staying here way longer than we thought because this museum was so engaging. However, as it neared late afternoon, we knew we had to head out so we could make our Royal Canal Tour.

Fav's moose!

Skansen had a life size Dala horse for people to take pictures with

For the Royal Canal Tour we boarded a tour boat and (you guessed it) toured the Royal Canal. Since it was winter though, the usual path the boat takes was cut basically in half because a lot of the water was still frozen. One part of our tour was quite frightening though, when our boat tried to plow through some ice and got a little stuck! It was making terrible scraping sounds and the captain couldn't get the boat to back up. I was getting some pretty bad Titanic vibes from that experience. Our captain did eventually get it out though so all was fine. It was fun to be on a boat and it made me want to go back sometime in the summer and go sailing!

The next day was Easter so we attended Easter mass at St. Eric's Cathedral. This Cathedral wasn't as grand as the last couple we have visited and that's because Stockholm isn't a very religious city. No wonder tickets were so cheap for Easter weekend! We got to the church just in time for mass to start, but since it was Easter mass it was completely packed. We stood in the back since there was nowhere else to go. The choir for the mass did an amazing job and the way they sang reminded me of opera singers. About halfway through the service a mom came in with her young son and stood by us. We didn't think anything of it until he pulled out a fidget spinner and starting throwing it around and going crazy with it. It wasn't just any fidget spinner either, it lit up. When all of my friends noticed it we all looked at each other and had to fight back laughter. It was the most ridiculous thing to see a neon bright fidget spinner during Easter mass!

This Easter was definitely not as traditional as we are used to. No one in town really seemed to care it was Easter. There weren't very many decorations and every single restaurant, museum, and store had regular business hours. There was also a huge event scheduled for this day that we weren't aware of until we were at a restaurant eating lunch. We all of a sudden saw a cloud of green smoke making its way down the street and heard fireworks going off. Shortly after that, a parade of thousands of people decked out ingreen scarves made its way through the city. We hurriedly waved our waitress over so we could pay our bill and go see what was going on. Turns out it was the opening game for the Swedish professional soccer team and the Swedes don't mess around when it comes to soccer! They had to close down major freeways so the people could march all the way to the stadium. It was really cool to witness such a huge event.

Just a small portion of the parade

We then went to the Vasa museum, which is a museum built around a Swedish warship. The ship was built extremely elaborately and beautifully, but sadly it only survived its maiden voyage for 30 minutes before sinking. It then sat at the bottom of the Stockholm harbor for 333 years until it was recovered. It is a very unique ship because it is the world's only preserved 17th century ship. It was incredible to see such a gigantic ship with so much history so close in person.

For the last day we got to go on the Skyview. You basically ride a glass gondola to the top of a spherical building (which also happens to be the world's largest spherical building). When you get to the top, you are able to see the entire city of Stockholm. It was breathtaking being that high up and taking in the beautiful view of the city. I also didn't realize how big and how far Stockholm extended to so it was engaging to view the city in this way.

Next, we ran over to the ABBA museum which was a complete blast. I learned way more about that band then I ever thought I would, belted some Mama Mia songs in a karaoke booth, and got on stage to become the 5th member of ABBA and dance with their holograms. It was such a fun museum that can take my money any day.

Before going to Sweden, none of us really knew much about it and I think that’s what made it so exciting. We had no expectations so we were able to experience everything purely and make our own conclusions. Actually, one of my favorite memories from the trip is a super simple one. It was when we were still on the airplane and we were almost there. Stockholm is made up of several islands, so when we were flying over them it was breathtaking. We were all crowded around the windows, excitedly telling each other to look even though we already knew everyone was looking and soaking in the view. We weren’t overacting either, literally everyone was doing the same. Usually on planes, people are tired or in bad moods, but that wasn’t the case on this flight. It was so fun to see how excited everyone was to be going to Stockholm and that’s when I knew I was going to really like it there. Out of all the places I have visited so far, Stockholm is the city I could see myself living if I were ever to live outside of the U.S.