We started the morning with breakfast. I wasn't sure what to expect, but happy for a change from the English breakfast. Turns out, meat and cheese plates with hard boiled eggs, bread, and yogurts with miscellaneous toppings. And coffee, sweet coffee, flowing freely.
After breakfast, we headed to Stockholm's old town to visit the palace. I picked the ticket that also included a nearby church, but we didn't get to that today. We'll pass through this island tomorrow, so maybe we'll hit it then. Regardless, old town is super cute.
We visited the palace chapel first, but didn't go in past the entry. It's Sunday and they were getting ready for a service. Next, we toured the Royal Apartments. There's an active restoration effort across one side of the palace, which meant some rooms in the Royal Apartments were mazes of scaffolding rather than tour sites. Those rooms aside, pretty swank digs.
There's an annual dinner for Nobel winners here as well.
The next museum in the palace is underground. The exhibits all talk about life for the non-royal household in the early days. There's also a lot of information about a fire that burned up the apartments in the 1670's, including the fates of the fire warden and his staff, who should have dealt with the fire long before it got so bad. They were sentences to run the Gauntlet 5 or 7 times (depending on where in the org chart they were, I think). The Gauntlet being a path between two rows of soldiers with sticks beating them the entire way, and one time being once in each direction through the soldiers.
The treasury houses previous royals' crowns, swords, and other regalia. Unlike Tower of London, there is no moving sidewalk to keep people from rubbernecking. Also, while items and rooms in the apartments are still in use, this exhibit is all historical jewels on permanent display.
We also went to the armory and spent entirely too long admiring horse armor. The rotating exhibit was about katana. Specifically about how they are the coolest kind of sword. We had missed the flyer on the way in, so this room was something of a surprise after several rooms of Scandinavian armor and arms.
Next up, we tried to find a beer hall listed in the tour guide. First we hit this sci fi shop:
And eventually we found the bar, but it was closed for most of the day. Right, Sunday.
We wandered around a bit, with me asking Bill if several pubs looked good and getting no real response. Eventually he came round to the idea of stopping to eat, but by then we were in a part of old town with only Italian places. Not interested. We pressed on, eventually finding a hole in the wall with elk burgers and herring on the menu. Nothing exciting about this fare, just calories to get us through to dinner.
Next we walked back to the side of the bridge our hotel is on and wandered around for a bit. It was nice to get back to cement sidewalks after hours of walking on cobble stones.
Eventually, we got to a high end, multi floor department store and walked through some interesting and expensive glass sculptures in home goods. We had dinner plans, but not until fairly late. So we hit a pub for pints, found a park with some steep steps to wander through, and got coffee. We were still a bit early when we got to the restaurant, but it wasn't full and they seated us immediately.
When I was researching food in Stockholm, this was the first place I added to the list of suggestions. Their website bills them as a meat and cocktail place - it's like they were advertising specifically to me. We ordered cocktails as soon as we were seated, and were not disappointed by the results. I declared mine to be what I always hoped a Margarita would taste like.
They have a set menu, but neither of us felt up to that many courses. We split a tartar that has raised the bar for tartar. It had gooseberries, spices, and a side of warm rye bread with pate instead of butter. Pate so great it was made from 2 different animals, veal hearts and kidneys and pig liver and bacon.
For mains, we each took a different recommendation from the waiter. Bill got the flank steak with fries. I got the smoked cockerel thigh with a side of ox tail marrow. The waiter looked askance at me ordering a meat as my side, but I just stared him down until he took the order. It seemed more polite that yelling, "Didn't you just get done telling us this was a mother fucking meat restaurant?"
All food and cocktails were top notch, but neither of us had room for dessert.
Our next stop would have been a night market a few blocks from our hotel, but when we got there, it looked like the last of the vendors was cleaning up. Instead we headed to the hotel bar to drink and work on the blog for the rest of our waking hour.
After breakfast, we headed to Stockholm's old town to visit the palace. I picked the ticket that also included a nearby church, but we didn't get to that today. We'll pass through this island tomorrow, so maybe we'll hit it then. Regardless, old town is super cute.
We visited the palace chapel first, but didn't go in past the entry. It's Sunday and they were getting ready for a service. Next, we toured the Royal Apartments. There's an active restoration effort across one side of the palace, which meant some rooms in the Royal Apartments were mazes of scaffolding rather than tour sites. Those rooms aside, pretty swank digs.
There's an annual dinner for Nobel winners here as well.
The next museum in the palace is underground. The exhibits all talk about life for the non-royal household in the early days. There's also a lot of information about a fire that burned up the apartments in the 1670's, including the fates of the fire warden and his staff, who should have dealt with the fire long before it got so bad. They were sentences to run the Gauntlet 5 or 7 times (depending on where in the org chart they were, I think). The Gauntlet being a path between two rows of soldiers with sticks beating them the entire way, and one time being once in each direction through the soldiers.
The treasury houses previous royals' crowns, swords, and other regalia. Unlike Tower of London, there is no moving sidewalk to keep people from rubbernecking. Also, while items and rooms in the apartments are still in use, this exhibit is all historical jewels on permanent display.
We also went to the armory and spent entirely too long admiring horse armor. The rotating exhibit was about katana. Specifically about how they are the coolest kind of sword. We had missed the flyer on the way in, so this room was something of a surprise after several rooms of Scandinavian armor and arms.
Next up, we tried to find a beer hall listed in the tour guide. First we hit this sci fi shop:
And eventually we found the bar, but it was closed for most of the day. Right, Sunday.
We wandered around a bit, with me asking Bill if several pubs looked good and getting no real response. Eventually he came round to the idea of stopping to eat, but by then we were in a part of old town with only Italian places. Not interested. We pressed on, eventually finding a hole in the wall with elk burgers and herring on the menu. Nothing exciting about this fare, just calories to get us through to dinner.
Next we walked back to the side of the bridge our hotel is on and wandered around for a bit. It was nice to get back to cement sidewalks after hours of walking on cobble stones.
Eventually, we got to a high end, multi floor department store and walked through some interesting and expensive glass sculptures in home goods. We had dinner plans, but not until fairly late. So we hit a pub for pints, found a park with some steep steps to wander through, and got coffee. We were still a bit early when we got to the restaurant, but it wasn't full and they seated us immediately.
When I was researching food in Stockholm, this was the first place I added to the list of suggestions. Their website bills them as a meat and cocktail place - it's like they were advertising specifically to me. We ordered cocktails as soon as we were seated, and were not disappointed by the results. I declared mine to be what I always hoped a Margarita would taste like.
They have a set menu, but neither of us felt up to that many courses. We split a tartar that has raised the bar for tartar. It had gooseberries, spices, and a side of warm rye bread with pate instead of butter. Pate so great it was made from 2 different animals, veal hearts and kidneys and pig liver and bacon.
For mains, we each took a different recommendation from the waiter. Bill got the flank steak with fries. I got the smoked cockerel thigh with a side of ox tail marrow. The waiter looked askance at me ordering a meat as my side, but I just stared him down until he took the order. It seemed more polite that yelling, "Didn't you just get done telling us this was a mother fucking meat restaurant?"
All food and cocktails were top notch, but neither of us had room for dessert.
Our next stop would have been a night market a few blocks from our hotel, but when we got there, it looked like the last of the vendors was cleaning up. Instead we headed to the hotel bar to drink and work on the blog for the rest of our waking hour.
No comments:
Post a Comment