Day 06: Stockholm sightseeing

Getting arround in Stockholm

Today I had planned a sightseeing tour of Stockholm. Since I stayed about 20 km outside of Stockholm, I wanted to get there by public transportation and then buy a hop-on hop-off sightseeing ticket for bus and boat. In Stockholm, there is a mobile app called SL that allows you to register and buy a ticket online. So I installed it and bought a day pass for all public transportation. Everything worked as expected. The ticket is created digitally and can be seen in the app as a QR code. When you get on the bus, there is a scanner that you can use to scan it, which I did, but the scanner didn’t recognize it. The driver barely spoke English and with the help of some passengers, we realized that the ticket was valid and the driver let me on.

The same thing happened when I wanted to enter the station to continue the journey to the main station. Again I had to go to the counter where I had to prove that the ticket was valid and they let me on. The officer at the counter suggested I go to the SL office in the main station and ask for help. At the central station, I went to the SL counter and tried to solve the problem. The clerk there told me that he could transfer my ticket to a plastic card for an extra SEK 20 (€1.8), but that this was not possible because I was not a Swedish citizen and he needed a Swedish bank account for the transaction!!!! He explained to me that the system was not intended for tourists, but only for locals. I tried to reason with him and asked for a refund. But all I got was him telling me to send a complaint to the company.

Joint train ride with Christopher

In the morning, as I was waiting for the bus into town, another man was already at the bus stop and we got talking. He told me that he was taking his Ducati Street Fighter to the nearby Ducati workshop for servicing. After I told him that I was on my way to Nordkapp with my KTM, we had enough to talk about until he had to get off the train. His name is Christofer and he has two other motorcycles besides the Ducati: a Harley Davidson and a BMW R18. He told me that he also has a racing car in Germany at the Nürburgring and goes there once or twice a year for a week. Expensive hobbies!

Sightseeing

I bought a combined hop-on hop-off bus and boat ticket for Stockholm and also took a ticket for the Vasa Museum. This museum houses the largest restored sunken ship in the world from the 17th century. It was brought to the surface in the 1970s in one of the largest operations of its kind. The museum also shows what life was like on the ship and shows a movie about the salvage and restoration process.

Stockholm has rich architecture. Below are the Opera and the Royal Palace, with its guards standing at several locations before the palace.

Stockholm lies on 14 islands connected by around 30 bridges. The city dates back to the 13th century. The city is a mixture of old and new architecture and is clean and well organized. During the tour we were shown some of the most important sights. I won’t go into detail here, just add some of the pictures I took.

As on the previous days of my tour, the day couldn't pass by without rain.