In the first week of May Christina and I visited for the first time Sweden and Latvia. It was a short but intense trip where we jumped in lots of cool places, we enjoyed a beautiful sunset on the northern sea and we ate lots of salmon. We also traveled togther for the first time and we discovered we are really good travel buddies.
We flew from Frankfurt Hahh to Stockholm without problems. In a couple of hours we reached our hostel, which was super clean, quiet and warm and we got to know a funny Canadian couple that was backpacking Europe.
Jumping in front of the royal palace
The most interesting feature of Stockholm is that the city developed on several islands, that now become different neighborhoods of the city. The city is full of bridges that interconnect the different islands. This is a capital, but not a lot of people are living here and in fact, we frecuently felt like we were alone in the city. Swedish people tend to concentrate on different hot spots all over the city, but once you are far from the spots you will hardly see any people.
Stockholm’s lovely city center is a different story because it is packed with tourists. In the city center is where we took our best pictures and the funnier ones as well. Stockholm is an expensive city and our wallet suffered, especially everytime we wanted to take public transportation. A one way ticket valid for the inner city center cost the amazing amount of 35 Swedish Krones, which is more or less 3.5 EUR. And this price is cheap, it can get 50 cents more expensive if you buy it over the counter! Food was really expensive as well. We frecuently went to supermarkets to buy some food instead of going to restaurants to save money but this move was not a dramatic difference because food is expensive even in supermarkets. Oh, and we realized that Swedish people don’t go to supermarkets very often because everything was in super size packaged. For example the cheese came in 5kg packages and the sausages in 100 unit bags.
The weather was fine, we had sunny days but it was still quite cold. I can imagine how cold, dark and wet this city must be in the winter, this is for sure not my favorite place to make a living!
Jumping in Stockholm
After 3 days in Stockholm we took a ferry to Riga crossing the Northern Sea. This was for me the highlight of the trip, because I was expecting a small boat and a difficult night and we found a massive ship where we had a great time. I’m speaking about a boat with 9 floors, supermarket (where you could basically only buy alcohol), Sauna, lots of different bars and restaurants, a discotheque, karaoke, an small casino, a duty free shop, a videogame center and a big theather. Impressive. We had a lot of fun on this boat and we took amazing pictures while we sail across the channels and when the sun went down on the sea, definitively the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen. We had fun with the people as well, who were more interested in the cheap alcohol that they could buy and drink onboard than with the beautiful scenary we went across. I really recommend ferries in the northern sea, they are not expensive at all and they are an exciting and interesting alternative to planes.
Sunset on the ferry
In Riga we checked in on a beautiful and cheap hotel. Riga has an exciting history as the city has been part of the German Empire, the Swedish Kingdom, the Old Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Since the country declared independence from the Soviets they had a stable democracy and a stable currency with only a couple of major crisis. Riga today is very touristic and I guess it will become a major touristic destination absorbing tourists from all over Europe. The city is plain beautiful and it has a very good nightlife. Or that’s what we were told by the american expats, we couldn’t check it out because we fell sick after drinking one shot of Riga Black Balsam, the local liquor poison. Even though touristic, Riga is still pretty cheap, you can’t miss the cheap and tasty dumpling places on the main streets! What we really liked is the lifestyle in Riga, there were everywhere terraces with people relaxing and having fun!
Riga Marketplatz
Related posts:
