July 30, 2015

Our trip to Sweden was quick, but I accomplished my two main goals…to go to Ikea and to eat Swedish Fish.  (Yes, I am a big nerd).  We only really spent a day and a half in Stockholm, we would have stayed longer but it was rainy and the forecast called for rain for the entire week, so we decided to just cut it short and keep moving.

We started our time in Sweden with an 8 hour layover in Malmo where we were waiting for our next train.  We took advantage of the free time to walk around and check out the city.  We managed to find a movie theater that was showing “Minions” in English, so we spent the afternoon at the movies.  🙂  It was a nice break from all of the walking around.  We took a sleeper train from Malmo to Stockholm, which was great.  We had a private room for the three of us and the beds were surprisingly comfortable (or maybe it just seemed that way compared to all of the camping!)  Once we got to Stockholm (about 6:00 am), we got started early with our day.  We found our campground and got all set up and immediately took off for the day.  We went to the Royal Palace, which was pretty cool.  The outside of the palace was not as grand as lots of the castles/palaces that we have seen, but the inside was very nice.  They had lots of the rooms open, so we could see a pretty decent amount of the palace.

Throne Room

Royal Palace

Throne in the Receiving Room

Royal Palace

One of the Queen’s Medals

Royal Robes/Jewelry

Medal for taking care of reindeer. lol

In the remaining part of the original castle

We also went to the treasury with the crown jewels, but unfortunately, no pictures were permitted.  The crowns were really amazing…I think I would like one of my own!  🙂

By this time, it was POURING down rain.  Of course, it was sunny in the morning, so we hadn’t brought our ponchos with us.  We were soaking and decided to skip the Viking Museum (which was an outdoor museum) and head straight to IKEA!!  We got there around lunch time and figured we would check out the lunch in an actual Swedish Ikea.  It was EXACTLY the same!  lol  Literally…the meatballs and potatoes tasted the same, Hayden had crepes with lingonberries which were the same ones that we always get and the cookies were the same too.  I guess that means we have been getting authentic Swedish food at our local Ikea.  lol  The funniest part of the trip was the insane line for lunch!  Seriously, we waited at least 30 minutes to get to the front of the line to order.  I guess everyone in Sweden really does go to Ikea.  Luckily for us, they sold Swedish Fish at the store, so we got to eat our Swedish Fish AT Ikea, IN Sweden…definitely an authentic experience.  😉

Eating Swedish Fish at Ikea

Lunch Line at Ikea

From Ikea, we walked across the street to the mall and just walked around for a while.  It was still raining, so we didn’t really feel like going back to the campsite.  The mall was nice, pretty much the same stores that we have at home.  By 7:00 pm or so, we went back to camp for the night.  It actually stopped raining for the night, which was nice.  First thing in the morning, we headed back to the train station and are now working our way to Oslo, Norway!