Stockholm; Friday, 21 December, 2018

I was intending on having a nice lie-in, but the hotel only did breakfast until 09:30 so instead I was up relatively early to grab a full breakfast.

After breakfast and repacking my bag I headed back into the airport terminal and over to the railway station to pick up the local train down into Stockholm, changing at the City station onto the Metro. I arrived at my hotel for the next two nights too early to checkin, so instead they took my luggage and I headed out into town.

I caught the metro down to the city centre and went for a little wander around the harbourside and the bottom of Gamla Stan, the historical central island of the city, before heading back to the mainland to pick up the hop-on-hop-off tour bus to take a tour around the city.

The journey was very interesting, not only for seeing much of the city, but also for taking in the Christmas decorations in the city centre, including down Kungsgatan – the Stockholm equivalent of Oxford Street.

The tour arrived back at the harbourside just as the sun was setting and was about to set off on the final tour of the night to take in the city in the dark, so I stayed on to take in the city lights.

After completing the second tour I headed back to the hotel and checked in, freshened up and then headed back into the city centre for a further wander around Gamla Stan.

I went to have a look around the Christmas Market in the Stortorget, the main square in the old town, but at the time I arrived they were in the process of closing down for the evening, so I didn’t get to have a particularly big look around, though it was pretty obvious that most of the stalls had been selling food which reminded me that I hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

I had a look round at some of the restaurants in the Old Town, but the prices were more eyewatering than the increasingly bitter wind that was whipping around the lanes, so I headed back towards the hotel and the supermarket that I’d spotted on the opposite side of the street, hoping that it would still be open.

Thankfully the supermarket was open until 10pm so I was able to pop in and pick up the makings of a decent dinner in my room, before heading back across the road as the first flakes of the next snow shower started to fall, to have dinner and then an early night.