Nobel

Stockholm was the second stop of a 10-day trip to Scandinavia in mid-November organized by the tour operator we love to work with in this part of the world, 50 Degrees North. We didn’t have much time in the city, sandwiched between stops in Copenhagen and Swedish Lapland, near the Arctic Circle. We dropped our bags off at The Lydmar, a small boutique property where the walls are covered with large photographs of anything from Iggy Pop to a wet dog. The location is ideal, smack dab in the center of the city, an easy stroll to Stockholm’s Old Town (Gamla Stan) and even less time to catch a ferry to one of the many nearby islands.

We caught a short ferry to the island of Djurgården, where we would find one of the highlights of the trip, the massive Vasa warship that sank in 1628. You really can’t understand how huge this 68-gun ship is until you see it. But once you do, you’ll understand why it sank almost as soon as it launched from being top heavy. It remained intact on the bottom of the Baltic Sea until the 1960s, when they finally had the engineering skills to miraculously get it on land. Also on the same island is the ABBA Museum, where you can follow the history of the band members as they made their way from playing small folk festivals in Sweden to becoming one of the most legendary pop bands of all time. Remarkably, they only toured for 6 years, but they amassed quite an empire through the hit play and movie, Mamma Mia, and now “ABBA Voyage,” a hologram spectacle in London that sells out nightly. According to Samuel, the GM at the Lydmar, Benny Andersson from the group still works out regularly at a gym next door to the hotel and you can see him roaming the city like a humble guy.

That night, we would dine on reindeer in the same restaurant that Nobel Laureates dine after receiving their awards at City Hall. Surrounded by the ten women I was traveling with all week, the waiter, who had a sense of humor, would arrive with each dish, saying, “Ladies and Steve, this is your next course…”