Stockholm Was Not Made For Me

Stockholm is a beautiful city, and May is a wonderful time to visit it. With daytime temperatures in the 60s and low 70s (and even one day where it made it to 81!) and a sun that's out for 18 or so hours, the air is comfortable and there's plenty of time to get in your sightseeing. As much as I loved these elements of Stockholm, the city's layout did not fit with how I like to explore new cities. Spread out over 17 islands and with a pretty significant mainland portion, Stockholm's street grid did not allow me to make an easy loop around to everything I wanted to see. Instead, I kept finding myself forced back onto one of the bridges connecting the islands, a frustrating endeavor. In the end, over my 3 days in Stockholm, I walked almost 35 miles through city blocks of Norrmalm and Gamla Stan, around the more residential island of Sodermalm, through the King's former hunting area of Djurgarden, across to the suburban-feeling Kritineberg, and up to the urban parks of Bellevueparken and Hagaparken.

I also had a hard time with the currency. Unfortunately, it it's not dollars or euros, I feel like it's fake money. With an exchange rate in the 8.7 Swedish krona (SEK) to the US dollar range, I had difficult figuring out relative prices. Was my 10 SEK candy bar a good deal or a bad one? What about my 100 SEK pizza?

With Stockholm behind me, tomorrow I move on to Oslo. Hopefully its layout is more conducive to me making a loop, because I already know that the currency situation will continue to be problematic (8.4 Norwegian krone (NOK) to the dollar)! And so right now, I leave with this Voice UK 2015 audition, that I STILL can't get over. One of my favorites.