Sunday. We did not go to church. Instead we sinned by laboring (walking) and shopping. Mother, Göran, and Robert joined us in the sinning.
We walked over Östermalm and on to Djurgården before returning to the hotel via Gamla Stan.
We had a nice dinner at the Hairy Pig Deli In Gamla Stan (another round trip walking).
After a long flight via Amsterdam we arrived early Friday night in Stockholm. A train ride later we checked in at Nordic C Hotel, and basically just went to sleep.
Saturday was spent walking around central Stockholm and shopping. Weather was OK, but somewhat cold.
Chie fell sick and spent the afternoon sleeping at the hotel while I met Jimmy and his family at Vete-Katten for a “fika.”
In the evening we had a dinner around the corner at Stockholm Fisk. It was eatable but nothing more.
Helena, as we talked about when we had dinner at Mäster Anders the other day, we promised to let you know how Piren Bar was after our visit there. For short, you do not need to visit!
The food is only OK, and you would expect something more for that price. The desert, a rhubarb pie with vanilla ice cream was a real disappointment – it was a rhubarb compote topped with pieces of cardamom rusk (kardemummaskorpor). Cold. I had expected a yummy hot delicious rhubarb pie directly from the oven with melting creamy vanilla ice cream on top.
We had a visit to Mancini at Tunnelgatan as well. It is in the same price range but much better experience, if you like Italian food. The food was excellent and you could feel the personnel loved Italian food and were proud of working at Mancini, whereas at Piren Bar the service was not bad but you felt the personnel did not really care if they worked there or at any other restaurant in Stockholm.
Chie and I spent most of the day shopping. Robban (my brother) came down from Uppsala to have lunch at Vapiano.
After lunch Robban joined us for shopping. Though Chie did most of it while Robban and I talked 🙂 Later in the afternoon we were all tired and returned to our hotel for a drink. Chie had a beer while Robban had a mineral water and I a cup of tea. At 4 pm Robban had to get back to Uppsala to prepare for his 24 hours work shift the next day, starting at 8 am.
At 5:30 pm we met Jimmy and Emma in the hotel lobby. From there we walked to Mancini on Tunnelsgatan, about 50 meters from where Olof Palme was murdered in 1986.
The dinner was delicious :-P. The best during our vacation! We had two wonderful starters – parma ham and carpaccio. YUMMY!!!
Besides the dinner it was also fun to meet Jimmy and Emma again. They visited us during their honeymoon two years ago. When we were done eating we took a taxi back to our hotel as it had started to rain. We took some drinks at the hotel and talked some more before Emma’s father picked them up at 10:30 pm.
What can you do in Stockholm? Well, you can have breakfast at the Nordic Light hotel. Then relax taste of Japanese food was to large. We checked some Japanese blogs and found a ramen shop called Ki-Mama that seemed good.
We had soy souce ramen and miso ramen and gyoza. It was all quite good. But we have a ramen shop (Ren) about 100 meters from our apartment in Naka-Meguro that is at least a 100 times better. And less than half the price. Not including the air ticket that is 😉
Afterwards we walked back to our hotel via Odenplan. Suddenly we heard a loud sound from above. A balloon using the big burner to heat the air inside the ballon.
Once we spotted the first balloon it was easy to spot the others. Quite a few. Seemed like a night perfect for ballon flying. Calm. Blue and clear sky.
Chie and I talked about riding one. And how fun it would be… For the first 10 minutes. But what about the other 80 or so minutes?