X2K Train Malmö-Copenhagen. Photo by Hugh Llewelyn

The main train booking site in Sweden is sj.se. To get the cheapest ticket you can, a great advice is to book in low traffic days like Mondays and too book early, because last minute deals are only for retires and youngster under 26. Last minute can be bought the last 24 hours before departure.

Another alternative is to buy the tickets at Tradera.se where SJ is placing their unsold train tickets on auction with the outgoing price as 1 SEK. Book your train ticket on the internet or in the ticket automat at the station to get the lowest booking fee. Also check the different train types, very often the speed train X200 is more expensive.

Personally (and many others with me) I find SJ’s new system to buy tickets more complicated, I like the way it were before when there were normal ticket prices and last minute prices.

There are also the alternative to book with veolia-transport.se, for example between Malmö – Stockholm or Malmö – Berlin. Their ticket system is with fixed ticket rates.

Both the Resrobot at reseplanerare.resrobot.se (mobile app too) and resplus.se are very useful travel tools if you decide to take a train trip.

You can find a list with all the tracks in Sweden at www.jarnvag.net, (info in Swedish) and lots of other information. Especially interesting if you’re a train enthusiast, since they also keep a list of Museum railways (even some steam trains).

If going from Stockholm Arlanda Airport in to Stockholm City I recommend taking the express train arlandaexpress.se to/from Arlanda since the traffic is sometimes not so reliable, with the train you’re always in time. They also use to have a journey time guarantee, so if you’re not in time, check if they pay you back the ticket price.

To travel locally within Stockholm County you can go by the subway. Timetables for the Stockholm subway can be found at sl.se and it goes rather far out in the suburbs. Make sure you get the right ticket card to lower your subway ticket fee’s, because buying only one ticket at the moment, is going to be expensive for you.

There are available SL cards I recommend that’s valid from 24h up to 7 days (and beyond if you plan to stay for long), but if you’re going to do sightseeing which includes a lot of museums and other attractions, I do recommend to get the Stockholm Card from the tourist office. It’s worth it and makes things a lot easier.

©Lifecruiser Love Train Rides

Other train travel related posts at Lifecruiser:

Travel News: Arctic Circle Pass by SJ
Where to go by train from Madrid
How to find cheap holiday deals from Sweden
 

Stockholm Old Town waterfront

Stockholm don’t feel like a big capital city, more like a romantic city just like Venice with it’s old architecture and canals, except that Stockholm don’t have the gondola rides. Instead there are plenty of boats in the city, since it consists of 14 islands combined with many different bridges. It’s also both very green and clean, one of the cleanest capitals in the world.

There are several guided boat tours to take, as well as opportunites to hire a boat or kayak and paddle your own "gondola" and sing romantic songs for your beloved one to make this day perfect. If you don’t bring your love with you, there is always the chance of meeting someone (there is a high density of singles in this city!). Why not take an old steamboat cruise, if you want a more unusual boat cruise?

Stockholm is a city with surprisingly many restaurants because the Swedes are very fond of international cuisine, but I suggest that you find yourself one in the waterfront where you can sit and enjoy the sea breeze while different boats is passing by. Perhaps a romantic boat cruise in the evening where dinner is served aboard.

The city has numerous green parks, so if you want a more budget alternative, you could buy something to eat in a local grocery stores or covered markets, there are plenty of ready-made dishes, salads and delicacies to bring with you outdoors and have a picnic somewhere nice.

A very popular picnic place is out on Djurgården, where also many other attractions are located, such as museums, Kaknästornet (tower with great views), Skansen (outdoor museum), the amazing Wasa War Ship museum – and the amusement park Gröna Lund if you are up to a rollercoaster ride and other terrifying rides.

If you want some exercise that is not too exhausting, there is different walking tours in the city, like the ABBA city walk, Millennium tour, rooftop walks or ghost walks in the evening darkness. Or why not rent a bike from one of the many bike stands?

Stockholm is a wonderful city to explore by your own, very safe and not too big to get totally lost within either. Your chances to get a perfect day are big, but as usual: it’s your own choice to have fun or not and remember, if you’re coming here: don’t forget to tell me about it so I may help you to experience that perfect day!

Some special dates to visit:

• Around the 20th of April: the pink cherry tree’s in bloom in the Kungsträdgården making a fantastic flower walk path which gets many Stockholmers out of their winter hibernation to enjoy the spring sun and an icecream in the park.
• 6th of June: Sweden’s National Day, mostly in the Kings Garden with some performances and tents with food and drinks. You could also get a glimpse of the Swedish royals passing by if keeping an eye on their schedule.
• Second Wednesday in June (June 12, 2013): The Archipelago Steamboat Day (actually in the evening only), departures from Strömkajen. Check with Stockholm tourist office to verify date and available tickets out to Waxholm.
• Midsummer Eve Celebration, June 21, 2013: If not invited to a Swedish Midsummer Festive event by friends with family, the best choice would be to go to Skansen, the outdoor museum where public traditional celebration always is held as well.

Of course there are many other dates where special events may be hold too, but these ones above might be the most special or traditional ones.

©Lifecruiser Love Stockholm

 
This post is part of the initiative "100 cities to home swap before you die" from Knok.com.
 

The idea of a Viking Ice Race popped up when visitors from the skating organisation from Holland visited Sweden after their Eleven Cities Tour (Elfstedentocht) of 1997 together with the winner of that years competition. An investigation started which later did show that the only route possible of a Swedish skate competition is just the route Uppsala-Stockholm, because it’s there the safest ices are with not so much open water.

To skate between Uppsala and Stockholm had been a classic route for all kinds of ice skaters for many years already before the Viking Run started for the first time in 1999, organized by the Friluftsfrämjandet organization and the Swedish skate association including other sponsors.

In 2013 it’s scheduled to go off at the 10th of February around 8am at Skarholmen, Uppsala and finish in Hässelby, a suburban of Stockholm. The Viking Run race is probably the worlds longest recurring ice skate race that take place on only natural ice and not on a special built up or artificial ice track.

There are actually several different races:

• The Vikingarännet 80 km start in Uppsala
• Tjejrännet (Women Race) 35 km start in Sigtuna
• A short race of 15 km start in Kungsängen

The race got it’s name from following the ancient Viking transport routes on lake Mälaren, but you don’t have to be a Viking to participate. All types of skates are allowed and I actually hope for some participants to choose similar skates as the Vikings!

Yes, even the Vikings did skate, but their skates were made of animal thigh/shin bones, had no shoe and were attached by leather strings only. At just one spot on the Swedish island Björkö, in the Viking town Birka, they found 70 skates together.

In this year’s vikingarännet there are more participants from other countries in Europe, like Great Britain, Belgium and Holland (last years winner) of course – so obviously this Swedish competition starts to be more known around Europe’s ice skaters.

If you have the opportunity to get there, there are plenty of places where you can see the ice skaters swooshing by. Or why not sign up for the race? Go to vikingarannet.com to signup or get more information.

Sign up for a distance that suits you, read the rules properly (ex. Ice prods are compulsory), prepare yourself to skate strong as a Viking, hope for great weather reports and have fun racing!

Lets hope the cold weather will continue, so there will be great ice’s for skating, you never know with the Swedish weather…

To get there:

From Europe there are low budget airlines like Norwegian.com or Ryanair.com to fly you to Stockholm, but I would try to get a Norwegian flight in the first hand, because you will arrive at Arlanda airport, which is much closer to the event than Skavsta airport where Ryanair arrives.

I also recommend that you take the arlandaexpress.com into Stockholm City Center or if you are going to Uppsala, take the special flightbus 801 between Arlanda airport and Uppsala. Also have a look at the arrivalguides.com and look up either Stockholm or Uppsala to get more start info about the two cities.

Special thanks to:

Anders Tysk, secretary-general and one of the originators of Vikingarännet for replying to my request, providing me with more information and pictures from the competition to use when writing this blog post.

©Lifecruiser Love Viking Ice Run

The Viking Run (Vikingarännet) 2013 Map, (click to see details)

You will notice many scenes from Disney films, that is because it’s an old tradition in Sweden to show Kalle Anka (Donald Duck in Swedish) at 3 o’clock in the afternoon at the Christmas Eve day.

Enjoy the peace and happiness of the holidays, where ever in the world you are. We spend this Christmas in Stockholm, Sweden this year. Next year it will be somewhere else!

©Lifecruiser Love Swedish Christmas
 

Earlier Swedish Christmas posts by Lifecruiser:

Christmas Tree Gifts 2011
Swedish Heart Pepparkakor for Christmas
Santa Travel Speed Need
Merry Christmas 2009
Christmas Dinner Delights 2008
Swedish Christmas Dinner Preparations 2008
Different Christmas 2007
Merry Christmas All Bloggers 2007
Some Swedish Christmas Gifts
Christmas Street Market Stockholm 2007
Wordless Christmas
Swedish Christmas Traditions
Christmas Eve is here (2006)
Christmas Preparations (2006)
Lucia with Glögg & Lussekatter (2006)
Lighten Up Christmas (2005)
 

Rather often, there can be very nice winter scenes in Stockholm with snow a while before Christmas, but equally often it can be melting away just right before Christmas Eve making all kids (and us!) very disappointed.

So there is no wonder that many Swedes has begun to spend the Christmas holidays abroad and especially New Years Eve – but it can be tricky to found the right trip since everyone want to go! It increases the prices a lot too.

This year, we have decided to stay at home during the holidays, because we’re busy fixing things in our new apartment and need to be able to relax at home for once. Our next trip will start some time in February-March instead…

©Lifecruiser ♥ Christmas
 

The Scandic Victoria Tower Hotel is designed by the architect Gert Wingårdh, 117 meter (384 ft) and did cost SEK 600 million (around USD 90 million) to be built. The hotel building is totally covered in glass – I just love this unusual patterned architecture!

My photo above doesn’t quite do it justice. I don’t exactly love it less when also discovering that the inside interior is decorated with design furniture from Vitra, Montana and Flos…

If you happens to be nearby: take the elevator up to the skybar at 34th floor and sit down and sip on a glass of Champagne with a view over Stockholms Silicon Valley.

This is the tallest hotel building in Scandinavia, but the tallest building in Sweden is actually Turning Torso in Malmö which I also adore and wrote about earlier.

©Lifecruiser Love Victoria Tower
 

The building has been nominated to Stockholm Building 2010 for it’s design by the Swedish architect Per Johanson, who played with pastel-colored balcony windows glass as a contrast to the white side of the house which continues over the roof and is supposed to make the house look like it’s upside down U-shaped – at least on a a distance.

What’s so special (read scary!) with this house is the balcony rail of glass from floor to ceiling that hangs like a loose plate outside the balcony itself. I’m afraid of heights myself, so my first thought was how I would dare to go to the front of the balcony rail without getting the feeling of falling down…

When traveling by the subway train passing by the house, you get many reflexes in the colored glass on the house. The more practical side of me thought: how difficult to clean the windows, so much glass everywhere – and how to clean the outside?

I suppose they hire professional windows cleaners to get the job done and not hanging out from there themselves. Phew!

This whole area at Brommaplan is now in the plans of renewing with 600 new apartments as well as 14000 kvm shopping/service areas and it was not a day too early if I should be honest! It’s a bit worn down and not effective used today.

Stockholm is growing and developing – all places need to catch the modern time we are in even though we also need to keep the wonderful old architecture Stockholm has too.

©Lifecruiser Love Stockholm
 

The Turning Torso is, with it’s 190 meters (623 feet) and 54 stories, the tallest building in Sweden when created, but also one of the most spectacular with it’s crazy 90 degrees twisting of the 9 cubes in the tower from top to bottom and irregular pentagonal shaped floors rotating around the vertical core.

A true artwork in structural expressionism by Santiago Calatrava (follow the link to read more about this fantastic engineers work!) from 2005, inspired by his own sculpture called the Turning Torso which the Swedish contractor saw and asked him to copy his design as a building.

Featured in Discovery channel’s TV program, Extreme Engineering – always so incredible fascinating – where they did show how a floor of this twisted tower was constructed. It’s also built with sustainability and an environmentally friendly way of life in mind and the building is supplied only with locally produced and renewable energy.

Santiago Calatrava (from Valencia in Spain) is considered to be one of the worlds elite designers who has won gold medal’s. A truly gifted structural engineer with an unusually artistic approach in his creations! I’m totally blown-away by several of his other architectural wonders too.

He also contributed (but did not won) in the architectural competition for the Swedish Öresund Bridge in the nearby area, which we had to pass over to get from Sweden to Denmark on our next leg of Lifecruiser Europe trip…

©Lifecruiser Love Unusual Architecture
 

When traveling, we often enjoy all the different architecture we get to see and this is an excellent example of a new thinking within apartment block planning, opening up for more creative surroundings for peoples living areas.

I’m all for it! Let new ideas grow and be implemented!

©Lifecruiser Love Beach Hammocks
 

If you have been following our travel blog for a while, you know that we already have announced that we are making preparations for a future move – and that we in that preparations phase were forced (lol) to drink a 31 years old Napoleon Mandarine Liquor… (We sold the emptied bottle later!)

We have been living in an already small apartment (50 sqm) for years now, just to be able to save for our travel, to afford going on as many trips as possible, but now we are moving to an even smaller apartment (43 sqm) higher up on the same street, believe it or not!

We will save an extra 600 SEK/month, move up one floor (not so cold apartment when not on ground floor), plus getting the extra bonus effect of not having our nagging, annoying neighbor who literally are stalking us with her negativity all the time.

The saved money will go to a future move, together with whatever other amounts we succeed to save up. Our future move will most certainly be to Spain if nothing unexpected happens – thinking of the economic crises in Spain which can affect our decision in many ways. Why Spain? Because of the ease for us and our family to get there, plus the excellent climate for our aching bodies.

When having a goal like travel or moving abroad, living a compact life style is not any problem at all. The adjustment to this compact living is going so easy that you wonder why the heck you have bothered with all the other stuff earlier in your life, which only complicates your life.

We have sold plenty of stuff by now, getting quite a bit of extra money to both cover the cost of the move and to buy new smaller, cheaper furniture which is easy to move or to get rid off later if we’re moving abroad next time. If we do, we will not take anything with us.

If not moving abroad, we will most certainly try to stay during the winters abroad, because the Swedish winters are killing us both slowly. We will start this winter, by going to Costa Blanca in Spain around February-March to do a research of which area there would be best for us.

Our nearest moving day though is set to the 3rd of December, so as you can imagine – if you know our efficiency since earlier – we have already started the packing for the move…

©Lifecruiser Love Travel