Thoughts on Stockholm
Sitting in the Admirals club lounge at Heathrow I have a few minutes to reflect on the past two weeks in Stockholm, Sweden. The city is essential built on a grouping of islands with bridges connecting them all. There are many different parts of Stockholm, some old and others more modern and they all have something fun and unique to offer. I enjoyed Gamla Stan (Old Stockholm) the most. It is old town as you would expect from a European city that has been around for 100’s of years. The streets are narrow cobblestone passages that are only wide enough for one car. Ironically, I never saw any one way signs. Old Town is mostly a tourist area now with lots of shops, galleries, restaurants and pubs. It has a tremendous amount of charm and shouldn’t be missed if you are visiting Stockholm.
Some of my favorite places in Old Town:
The Temple Bar. Located on the waterway, the Temple Bar is a small pub with seating for probalby 60 inside and 40 more outside. The location is great for people watching and most importantly, they have Mariestads. Mariestads is a Swedish beer and although Sweden is not known as a beer mecca, Mariestads goes down in my book as one of the finest beers in the world. It is very smooth with great flavor and a hearty 5.8% alcohol volume. Hello buzzville. Charles and I made it to the Temple Bar at least every other night during our trip and always managed to come out of there much happier than when we went in. Thank you Mariestads.
Michelangelo’s. Quaint little Italian restaurant in the heart of Gamla Stan. I started with the muscles, which were steamed and then topped with a spicy tomato stock. Excellent. Some of the best muscles I have ever had. I followed that with a basic itilian staple…Spaghetti Bolognese. The spaghetti was wonderful and the sauce had obviously been cooked for a long time, which is the way I like my sauce. It was very very good. Overall, Michelangelo’s gets 4 out 5 stars. I liked it so much that we ate there a second time.
Ruby Grill. Also located in the heart of Gamla Stan, Ruby Grill is a “Texas” bistro down to the nachos on the menu and the margarita listing on the wall. True to Texas form, the steaks cooked over Kingsford Charcoal. It was funny to me to see literally 8 bigs of kingsford stacked up beside the indoor grill. The food was great and as with any quality Stockholm restaurant, they served Mariestads. Ahhhh. Charles and I shared an order of Texas style nachos, which were very similar to what you would find at any bar in the state. We followed that up with Ribeyes that were very tasty. For dessert I had a vanilla cheesecake that was also excellent. Prices at Ruby Grill are a fairly expensive but well worth it. Ruby Grill is worthy of 4.5 star rating.
Outside of Gamla Stan some of the other cool things I experienced are:
Golden Hits. Maybe the funnest nightclub in Stockholm. Golden Hits is a multi-level, multi-themed club that has a little something for everyone. Level 1 has a karaoke lounge up front with a stage/dance floor in the back. The night we went, Elvis was playing in the back room complete with rhinestone outfit and sideburns. I thought I was in Vegas. Up the stairs on the second floor is all 80’s all the time. Prince, Michael Jackson, the Cars, etc drown the airwaves.
Finair. The trip over took us from DFW to JFK, then JFK to Helsinki, and finally Helsinki to Stockholm It sounds like a bear of a trip because of the 2 connections, but total travel time was 3 – 4 hous less than if we would have had one connectection through Heathrow. Our trip started off well with no delays getting out of Dallas. We had an hour in NY and had no problem making our connection. Our flight to Helsinki was delayed and we already had a tight connection (40 minutes) so Charles and were already planning on missing our Finnish connection. Fortunatly, although we landed 30 minutes late, customs for Finland was very fast and easy and we made it to our gate right as boarding started. My total time on Finish soil not including time in the plane…..15 minutes but at least I got another country stamped in my passport. The coolest thing about Finair is that on our flight from Helsinki to Stockholm, they had cameras on the nose and on the bottom of the plane. There were several monitors throughout the plane and we got to watch the entire flight from the Pilot’s eye. Landing was really cool. It looked more like a video game than reality.
Some of my favorite places in Old Town:
The Temple Bar. Located on the waterway, the Temple Bar is a small pub with seating for probalby 60 inside and 40 more outside. The location is great for people watching and most importantly, they have Mariestads. Mariestads is a Swedish beer and although Sweden is not known as a beer mecca, Mariestads goes down in my book as one of the finest beers in the world. It is very smooth with great flavor and a hearty 5.8% alcohol volume. Hello buzzville. Charles and I made it to the Temple Bar at least every other night during our trip and always managed to come out of there much happier than when we went in. Thank you Mariestads.
Michelangelo’s. Quaint little Italian restaurant in the heart of Gamla Stan. I started with the muscles, which were steamed and then topped with a spicy tomato stock. Excellent. Some of the best muscles I have ever had. I followed that with a basic itilian staple…Spaghetti Bolognese. The spaghetti was wonderful and the sauce had obviously been cooked for a long time, which is the way I like my sauce. It was very very good. Overall, Michelangelo’s gets 4 out 5 stars. I liked it so much that we ate there a second time.
Ruby Grill. Also located in the heart of Gamla Stan, Ruby Grill is a “Texas” bistro down to the nachos on the menu and the margarita listing on the wall. True to Texas form, the steaks cooked over Kingsford Charcoal. It was funny to me to see literally 8 bigs of kingsford stacked up beside the indoor grill. The food was great and as with any quality Stockholm restaurant, they served Mariestads. Ahhhh. Charles and I shared an order of Texas style nachos, which were very similar to what you would find at any bar in the state. We followed that up with Ribeyes that were very tasty. For dessert I had a vanilla cheesecake that was also excellent. Prices at Ruby Grill are a fairly expensive but well worth it. Ruby Grill is worthy of 4.5 star rating.
Outside of Gamla Stan some of the other cool things I experienced are:
Golden Hits. Maybe the funnest nightclub in Stockholm. Golden Hits is a multi-level, multi-themed club that has a little something for everyone. Level 1 has a karaoke lounge up front with a stage/dance floor in the back. The night we went, Elvis was playing in the back room complete with rhinestone outfit and sideburns. I thought I was in Vegas. Up the stairs on the second floor is all 80’s all the time. Prince, Michael Jackson, the Cars, etc drown the airwaves.
Finair. The trip over took us from DFW to JFK, then JFK to Helsinki, and finally Helsinki to Stockholm It sounds like a bear of a trip because of the 2 connections, but total travel time was 3 – 4 hous less than if we would have had one connectection through Heathrow. Our trip started off well with no delays getting out of Dallas. We had an hour in NY and had no problem making our connection. Our flight to Helsinki was delayed and we already had a tight connection (40 minutes) so Charles and were already planning on missing our Finnish connection. Fortunatly, although we landed 30 minutes late, customs for Finland was very fast and easy and we made it to our gate right as boarding started. My total time on Finish soil not including time in the plane…..15 minutes but at least I got another country stamped in my passport. The coolest thing about Finair is that on our flight from Helsinki to Stockholm, they had cameras on the nose and on the bottom of the plane. There were several monitors throughout the plane and we got to watch the entire flight from the Pilot’s eye. Landing was really cool. It looked more like a video game than reality.
posted by barry c at 2:39 PM
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