Stockholm is amazing! Eric and I both really enjoyed this beautiful, clean city plopped right on the glistening coast of Sweden. It’s packed with cobblestone roads, colorful buildings, dramatic architecture, and cute alleys with hidden cafes. The small cobblestone streets are populated with beautiful, tall (I felt average height!) Swedish people who are either well dressed and headed to their professional careers, or in a pack of young moms in sleek workout outfits walking with strollers. The people here were all nice and seemed very happy – livin’ the good life!
A piece of the culture here that I really liked was what they call “fika”. Fika = grabbing a coffee and a cinnamon bun (or “kanelbulle”) with a friend or two in one of the many (MANY!) coffee shops to just chat and catch-up.
Besides the techie and professional part of Stockhom there are two other main neighborhoods we explored: Gamla Stan & SoFo. Gamla Stan is the older neighborhood – full of small, winding streets and adorable hidden alleys. We had an amazing Swedish dinner there at a restaurant called Under Kastanjen (see pic below!).
SoFo was hipster nation: land of the man-buns, mustaches, and plaid shirts. It was a cool neighborhood that reminded me a lot of the Mission and SOMA in San Francisco. We did our own little pub crawl in this SoFo area and found an awesome live band (Slowgold, complete with a female singer with a great voice and very thick eyebrows), a cool bar called Bananas, and a local brew pub that only sold beer from home-brewers and mirco-breweries in Stockholm.
Stockholm in a nutshell: LOVED IT! Eric and I agreed that we could both live here (well maybe not during the winter months where it gets to -30 degrees and only 4 hours of sunlight) – but from March-November, count us in!! It is not too packed with people and there’s definitely no traffic because everyone walks and bikes! There seemed to be a great balanced lifestyle: professional work, social fun, and family all seemed important to the Stockholmians!
And a few pictures of Stockholm’s adorable beauty!…
