Ok, so it is not exactly the most correct time to visit Sweden, but my next trip will be based through Stockholm the last week of October. I will be taking Iceland Air again through Iceland to Stockhom.
I am staying at the The Colonial Hotel (sorry you will have to click on the English link at the bottom on your own) which I reserved through Hotels.com for good or for ill. When I reserved the room I was pretty certain that the exchange rate was going to be horrible and I am probably losing money as we speak because the room is already paid for. In May when I reserved the room it was 5.9 SEK (Swedish Krona) for each USD. Now we are at about 6.6 SEK per USD and it still appears to be climbing. There is no telling whether that will hold out for 7 weeks but it would have probably saved me about $150 overall unless the hotel is raising its prices, which is unlikely because late October is very offseason. I am not going to sweat it all though because if it does hold up food and drink and gifts will be cheaper for me anyway.
I am leaving on Friday night after work to arrive Saturday early afternoon. I will be staying until the following sunday, so 8 days overall. I have planned a few excursions out of Stockholm and my first run will be to Bohus Fortess right on my first Sunday there because it is the last day of the year that the castle will be open to the public. I would assume the town can still be visited but getting inside isn't available. Either way, the fortress is actually Norwegian but was absorbed by the Swedes during some war or another. It is from the 12-1300s so represents a real working fortress more so than a palace type castle. The train/bus trip is going to take about 4 hours and change but I will have to deal. We did it in Japan and I figure I can do it in Sweden too. I bought a Eurail Sweden Pass that runs first class for 3 non-consecutive days. While some of what I have planned is dependent on whether George can visit Stockholm or not I have tentatively also planned a trip to Orebro for a day trip as well. It looks nice and has some good history in it and the train ride will be much more reasonably short. I also have planned to visit Skoklosters Slott on my last Saturday in Sweden with a train run as well. It is not very far from Stockholm.
Aside from those excursions I have planned to visit Visby which is on the island of Gotland and has a very nice medieval town. To get there I will be flying through a domestic Swedish flight I booked through Fly Gotland (again you may have to click on the English link). I am taking off early in the morning and returning in the early evening. Each flight will be about 1/2 hour long. The total same day round trip ticket cost me about $137USD (which could have been cheaper if I waited, darnit...) Also because Sweden is a large archipelago I couldn't have done the trip without some form of boating excursion. I have therefore also already booked a Dinner Cruise to Vaxholm which I did round trip. It will obviously be dark during the ride but I think I will have fun. That is my Friday night. The meal is ala carte, hopefully it won't be killer expensive...
Additionally I have a few things I want to do in Stockholm itself, such as: Skansen, The Royal Armory, The Museum of Medieval Stockholm, Stockholm's City Hall, The Royal Palace of Stockholm and probably a couple other places depending on time.
I have purchased a 72 hour Stockholm Card as well to get a good bit of the transport and museum fees out of the way ahead of time. I won't know if it was worth it until all is said and done (the same as the train pass).
More to come the closer it gets....
