🎶Gimme, gimme, gimme some meatballs and pancakes🎶

As you have probably guessed, my 4th summer post and 3rd country is Stockholm and/or Sweden!!! Now, before I tell you about our time in Stockholm, I need to tell you something else: Stockholm has some of the best meatballs and pancakes, and it has a large number of museums.

The first day, we took an ocean bus around the city in the morning. Have you ever been to Boston and taken a duck tour? It is kinda like that, but this one is a shark. It is a bus that can go in water, so first you sightsee on land, and then you go sightseeing in the water. It’s fun! Afterwards, we went to the Vasa museum, which we thought was the Viking museum, but it wasn’t. Vasa is basically a museum about a ship that sank around 400 years ago, and they found it and put it into a museum! When we were in the museum, we found the museum café, and had our second round of Swedish pancakes that day (we also had a few for breakfast).

The ship at Vasa. I mean, at the Vasa museum, because this ship is the Vasa.

Me trying to steal my sister’s delicious Swedish pancakes

Then we went to our next museum: the ABBA museum. If you are wondering, why is there an ABBA museum in Stockholm? It’s because ABBA is Swedish! Ok, that was kinda obvious. You should have guessed that since “Gimme Gimme Gimme” is an ABBA song that originally goes 🎶gimme, gimme, gimme a man of the midnight…🎶. It was cool learning how they make the songs. For dinner, we ate at a place called Tradition and, of course, we had to eat meatballs (for the second night of meatballs in a row*)!

The next day, we went to the Skansen museum. Well, not exactly a museum. Have you ever been to an outdoor museum? If you haven’t, they are not really museums. They are more like historical parks that sometimes have actors. We went to one when we went to Japan, and you didn’t even need a map; you could just look around yourself. But this one was so big, some of the reviews were like "I got lost” and other things like that. IT WAS SO BIG!!! We visited most of the animal exhibits, like the aquarium, lemur exhibit, and the Nordic animals (think moose, lynx, seal, bear), even though I could tell my dad wanted to do the historical stuff (my mom went shopping).

That night, we were so sick of meatballs that we decided to eat Vietnamese food. And since we eat Vietnamese food so often, we ordered basically whatever on the menu we recognized (my mom is Vietnamese, so we usually eat Vietnamese food at my grandparents’ house. My mom also likes to make banh xèo).

Us walking in the lemur exhibit, which was the only one where you could walk into their home. We were going to pet them, but then we looked at the yellow sign (as you can see, we are doing right now) and we were like, maybe not.

Slurping noodles at the Vietnamese restaurant. *Sluuuuuuuurrrrppppp*

The last day, I had pancakes again for breakfast, and then we walked to the old town, aka Gamla Stan. We shopped and looked around, ate lunch, and then went to the Nobel Prize museum. It was pretty interesting. When you first walk in, there is this machine on the ceiling that has all the pictures of people who have ever won the prize going slowly around on a belt. For our last dinner, we ate at a place called Bistro Bestick, where we had, among other things… meatballs (although sadly no pictures 🧆).

My sister walking in Gamla Stan. Did you notice the buildings in the back go red, orange, and yellow?

Mia at the Nobel prize museum holding an exceptionally large Nobel prize.

Stockholm staaaaaats!

Best food: OG Swedish fish (honorable mention to Swedish pancakes)

Best shopping: Gamla Stan for souvenirs

Fun fact: The Nobel Prize ceremony is held in Stockholm every year, because Alfred Nobel was Swedish

Best things to see/do: Me: ABBA museum, Mia: Skansen

Where we stayed: Nofo hotel/wine bar

How 2 pronounce: stock-hole-mmm

*P.S. I didn’t tell you, but we also had meatballs on our travel day from Ålesund to Stockholm.