This is a guest post by the lovely Rhian from www.rhianwestbury.co.uk
This Easter was my first Easter out of retail and I wanted to make the most of the time off by going away. After using the Skyscanner app to find the cheapest place with the best flights Sweden was settled on.
This Easter was my first Easter out of retail and I wanted to make the most of the time off by going away. After using the Skyscanner app to find the cheapest place with the best flights Sweden was settled on.
The first thing people said when I mentioned I was going to Sweden was how expensive it was meant to be, but I want to put this myth to bed. As a (virtually) Londoner Sweden was not more expensive than being at home, and just like London if you looked around you could find restaurants and bars which weren’t expensive. You could easily have a tea and cake for a fiver and a pizza with beer for about 10-12 pounds so there’s no big expense.
We flew into Stockholm and spent two days there which was just enough time to do everything we wanted to do without getting bored. The city is a made up of lots of small islands joined together by bridges which was a novel concept. We walked for about half an hour and had technically been on about six different islands. We chose to stay in a hostel (we did opt for an en-suite room) which was inside an old prison which meant there was lots of quirky things about but the rooms were quite narrow.
The town was easy to navigate and we did quite a lot of walking- mostly without the need for a map. There was quite a lot to do here including an aquarium with a rainforest style front, a small zoo, beautiful architecture and a theme park (although this wasn’t open when we arrived). The best piece of advice i’d give is not use the metro, you miss out on so much if you don’t walk around.
On our third day we took a train 6 hours south to Gothenburg, and instantly we knew how much further south we were as the weather was so much warmer, and Gothenburg was beautiful! There was so much green space and parks, places you could hire bikes and segways, and generally a more relaxing atmosphere than Stockholm. Plus not even Easter Sunday would stop everything being open!
There wasn’t as much to physically see here but it was much nicer to explore, but if you do nothing else then head to the Science Museum as it is singlehandedly the best place I have ever been to. All of the games and hands on attractions are just as much made for adults as they are for kids, which kept us amused for ages, but they also have an indoor rainforest and aquarium. This was complete with monkeys and other animals which weren’t in cages,so yes you probably could’ve touched them. I almost screamed the place down when a monkey almost jumped on my shoulder though, took me by complete surprise!
All in all I had a lovely five days in Sweden; the food and drink was nice, the weather was beautiful and the staff were so friendly. Plus pretty much everyone speaks English as it’s mandatory to learn it in school until the age of 16!
Tips for Sweden
Don’t use the metro as you’ll miss a lot by being off the roads
Make ensure you go the Science Museum in Gothenburg
Book any internal travel in advance (you can say lots of money!)
Get the bus airport transfer to/from the airports as it’s a lot cheaper than a taxi
Make sure you take sunglasses, even if it isn’t warm it tends to be sunny
Have you ever been to Sweden? Would you like to go?
Have you ever been to Sweden? Would you like to go?
This is really interesting as I also love Sweden and have been to both Stockholm and Gothenburg and agree that the latter is a really beautiful place, and its a lot cheaper than Stockholm. I was also lucky enough to need my sunglasses when I was there which made it easier to enjoy!
ReplyDeleteI haven't visited either but I would love to!
DeleteI've always wanted to visit Sweden so this was a really helpful post xxx
ReplyDeleteGreat tips from Rhian too.
DeleteGreat post. I've always fancied going to the Scandinavian countries, especially in winter x
ReplyDeleteMe too Hannah!
ReplyDeleteOh what a lovely guest post - we are really hoping to go to Sweden sometime soon, fingers crossed
ReplyDeleteLaura x
Let me know if you do go Laura, I would love to read your post.
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