After spending the morning at the Vasa Museum in Stockholm I decided to have lunch in the museum restaurant. Museum restaurants are always dicey quality wise, but it looked good.
The restaurant serves "simple Swedish food" according to the museum brochure, but my meal was excellent. They had about three main dishes and lots of very ample sandwitchs and salads. Since I had Swedish meatballs the night before I decided on a lighter meal of fish.
I had salt cod with boiled potatoes and sauted winter vegetables. The cod was accompanied by lignon berry jam and capers (again I really love these bits of sweet in salty dishes). The vegetables were really great, they included beets with the standard carrots leeks and celery saute ... adding a very nice flavour. It's cafeteria style, you order, take your cold food and then the waiter brings your hot food. A nice touch was that when the waiter he noticed that I did not have any bread, and so he told me I should go back and get some ... that's really friendly and nice service!
Again, plan your museum visit, go to the museum ahead of the crowd and then have lunch on the early side too. When I went in I was alone in line, when I left there was a line (although it was pretty short).
It's only open for lunch, but I recommend it highly.
On Friday night I ate at the Pelikan Restaurant in Stockholm. It was recommended on the site Spotted by Locals as a good place for typical Swedish food. So I thought I would try it.
The wait was about half hour for a table, but it looked good so I enjoyed a very nice local beer called Wisby Hansa Pils at the bar on the left side. It was really great because the restaurants and bars in Sweden are non smoking - what a relief from the crazy Austrian system!
When it was time to eat, I was led into the dining room, a very nice bistro-like room with very high ceiling, ceramic tile floor and nice decorations. It was quite loud, but very pleasant space, and they gave me a very nice table.
My waitress was not really friendly (my greeting: "You're not from Sweden are you?") or efficient, but maybe it's because the restaurant was very busy. I ordered the Swedish meatballs and another beer. Unfortunately my waitress did not take the time to understand which beer I wanted so brought me the wrong one and she was so inattentive that I never had a chance to ask her to change it, so I simply drank it.
The Swedish meatballs were huge and tasty. I really like meals where they mix flavours like sweet (lignon berry jam), sour (pickles) and meat/gravy together. (Austrians do that with schnitzel and cranberry sauce.)
In summary, my food was very good and everything else looked great too. Everyone seemed to be having a good time, although I noticed that others were a bit frustrated by the service as well. I would recommend the restaurant, especially with a group, but be patient.
On the way to the Future Urban Transport Conference in Göteborg Sweden I spent a day in Stockholm exploring the city and its transport system. It was a relatively warm and sunny, so everyone was out enjoying the day.
I planned my short trip using the website Spotted by Locals. Many of their recommendations were in the SoFo area (the neighborhood south of Folkkungagatan) in the Södermalm part of Stockholm. It's an "old" (I would say 1910-1920) district that has been rediscovered by creative young urban types, so it's filled with interesting shops, restaurants, coffee shops, bars etc.
Spotted by locals recommended a park called Montelius-Gäten. It's a little hard to find on their map, but it's just behind Bastugaten, which you can reach by walking uphill from Hornsgaten (here's my Stockholm Visit map). It's a very nice path running along the edge of the hill overlooking the harbour and city with a series of benches, lawns etc.
On Saturday morning I walked through the city to the Vasa Museum, it's a huge sailing ship that sank on its maiden voyage (in 1634) only to be rediscovered in 1957. More in the next post.
On leaving the museum I was able to catch a historic trolley to the centre of town. It reminded me of San Francisco and I talked briefly with the conductor about San Francisco's historic trolleys. At the square where the trolley ended, the group that runs the historic tram had a bookshop set up in another old trolley. I did not have time to browse because my bus was arriving to take me to the Stockholm museum of Public Transport (more in another post).
After leaving the Public Transport Museum, I walked through the SoFo district again and had an great ice cream at AH (two of the flavours I had were saffron and licorice). Then I headed to the main station to catch my train to Göteborg.
Stockholm has a great public transport system. I was able to buy a 24-hour pass for about $10 that let me use everything - even the historic tram. The subway system is excellent, very nice cars and stations. My only complaint is that you cannot buy tickets (either for the public transport system or the railway) with a credit card unless you know your PIN. So you need to wait in, quite long, lines to buy your tickets. I probably wasted 20 minutes this way on Friday.
More Stockholm photos - views, public transport, public transport museum on my Flickr sets.
Only one exhibit puzzled me. During World War II there must have been a fuel shortage and Stockholm seems to have experimented with alternative fuels. There was a model of a quite involved bus storage yard where trailers with cylinders were attached and detached from the buses. Nearby there were three actual trailers. I couldn't find anyone to ask about them, so they are a mystery.
I had salt cod with boiled potatoes and sauted winter vegetables. The cod was accompanied by lignon berry jam and capers (again I really love these bits of sweet in salty dishes). The vegetables were really great, they included beets with the standard carrots leeks and celery saute ... adding a very nice flavour. It's cafeteria style, you order, take your cold food and then the waiter brings your hot food. A nice touch was that when the waiter he noticed that I did not have any bread, and so he told me I should go back and get some ... that's really friendly and nice service!
In 1957 the ship was found again, now surrounded by silt, and the King supported the idea of raising it up from the seabed. The process took four years, but the ship could be raised and then moved to a temporary museum for restoration and documentation. I visited the ship on my first trip to Sweden in 1983, but several years ago they opened a new museum in a building that surrounds the ship and provides great views of all levels.
The museum has a film presenting the history (with English subtitles) that runs almost every half hour. Also they offer tours (in English) several times a day. Both the tour and film are excellent and I recommend them highly. One more recommendation: get there early ... the museum is justifiably popular so it fills fast. I was there about 10 minutes after opening and had the place pretty much to myself for about 15 minutes. When I left at about 1 pm, it was really getting crowded.
Stockholm has a great public transport system. I was able to buy a 24-hour pass for about $10 that let me use everything - even the historic tram. The subway system is excellent, very nice cars and stations. My only complaint is that you cannot buy tickets (either for the public transport system or the railway) with a credit card unless you know your PIN. So you need to wait in, quite long, lines to buy your tickets. I probably wasted 20 minutes this way on Friday.
