A trip to Stockholm, Sweden with a GPS receiver ----------------------------------------------- This document was written by Paul Edwards and is released to the public domain. On 1999-04-17 at about 07:30 BST we caught a plane from Heathrow, London arriving at Arlanda Airport (ARLAND) at about 10:43 CET. Arlanda is Sweden's international airport, about 45 minutes bus drive away from Stockholm. We then caught a bus (they are extremely frequent) from Arlanda to Stockholm, arriving at "City Terminal" (CITYTL) which is also called "Central Station", and one more alias is "T-Centralen", although it's probably a bit more complicated than that, arriving at 11:34. It cost 60 SEK each. My original theory was that City Terminal described the building itself, where you can buy things at shops etc, but it is actually what the bus people call it. Central Station is for intercity railways, and T-Centralen is the underground railway within Stockholm, and that it appears on the map 3 times for 3 different entrances. Incidentally, we got to Heathrow by tube (which cost from memory 1.60 each) from Hounslow, carrying only our backpacks (smallish, we're not backpackers). I also operated my GPS in the aeroplane (I especially asked to sit on the left hand side which was North facing since there appeared to be more satellites on that side). I had rung up already to find out the rules and so long as I didn't operate it whilst taking off and landing (ie when the fasten seatbelt sign is on) it was OK. After arriving at City Terminal we found a tourist information place from which we bought two tickets. One cost 60 SEK and gave unlimited transport for 24 hours. The other was the Stockholm card, which cost 199 SEK and only started when we first used it. The latter allows entrance to most museums. One good thing was that both cards last 24 hours, rather than the more normal same-day usage. So we had until midday to use the travel card. First we went to our hotel in Gardet. Our hotel was Silja Hotel Ariadne (SILJA) and cost a whopping 895 SEK for a double room. And that was the cheapest hotel we could find! It appears that there is no mid-range hotels in Stockholm. You can go for a hostel or you can pay an exorbiant amount. We actually did try to get into a hostel, but the only one we knew about was full. We perhaps should have tried turning up to the tourist information place and booking on the day, but we weren't that adventurous. Getting to the hotel was a complete nightmare. For starters it was raining. The hotel didn't know their GPS location of course, but I asked them to elaborate on their "500 metres from Gardet station" by asking them the direction. They told me North. They were wrong, it was West. So after getting out at Gardet station (GARDET) I created a waypoint 500 metres North. I then attempted to follow the non-GPS directions I had been given, ie follow the signs to Silja Terminal (whatever a Terminal is - turned out to be a ferry port). So I did this, ignoring the GPS, until I'd gone more than 500 metres with no end in sight, although there was a bridge in the distance, which had been mentioned in the instructions. I then decided to switch to navigation by GPS. We went cross-country through some park, hoping to get a vantage point, and indeed we did see a bridge, and it was in the right direction according to the GPS, so we crossed the bridge. Halfway across the bridge there was a little shelter which led to some weird corridor with broken glass in it. I paused there to recheck my directions. GPS was still saying it was further on, across the bridge though. Crossing the bridge itself was a daunting proposition, as by this stage we didn't know if we were trespassing. Ahead was some sort of building complex which went right down to the water. Or it might have, it was hard to tell whether the bit that was in the water was actually a building or a ferry like we've never seen before. I initially thought it wasn't a ferry, as it looked like it wasn't sitting on the water, it seemed more like it was suspended above the water. It wasn't until we saw it leave later that we realised for sure that it was what is presumably the world's largest ferry. It makes sense when you think about it, Sweden doesn't have land connections to the rest of Europe, so they need large ferries. So we crossed the bridge completely and ended up in the Silja Terminal, which was the ferry port. It looked like a place we shouldn't really be, lest we be accused of being Danish infiltrators or something. So we went down, and then took a look at the building again, as we weren't sure this was Silja Terminal. The building said "Silja Line" from memory, which may not have been the same thing. The GPS was still pointing us on, so on we went. We got to some highway, and I wanted to do a suicide dash across the road to go to some buildings on a hill, but my wife was less adventurous and we decided to ask some people we saw. They didn't speak English (they didn't look like your average Swede either). So we decided to quarter the area by heading along the highway. There was another bridge there, which could have been what we wanted, but we decided that it was better to go back towards the station, to see if the hotel popped up. A couple of hopefuls popped up, but all in vain. We went back to the road near the station and took a closer look at the sign that I followed to "Silja Terminal" to make sure I hadn't been into the glue again. Sure enough, the sign was there, and I got the long awaited apology from my wife from casting aspersions on my drug intake. We also intercepted a couple of pedestrians to ask them if they knew where the hotel was, and they pointed to a large building in the distance, which ironically we had seen before but semi-discounted. A little way down the road we saw another "Silja Terminal" sign that my unobservant wife had missed whilst we were originally walking down the road. We followed it this time, and were about to go down a road, when the pedestrian called out for us to go over the bridge rather than taking the road. I had my doubts, but didn't want to appear impolite. We then got to the same shelter we had been on before (where we had stopped half an hour ago), and lo and behold, there was a sign there saying "Silja Hotel down this spooky corridor", yet another thing my wife had failed to spot half an hour ago! Even after we had gone down the corridor we came to some business centre where it still wasn't obvious where the hotel was. But we kept on walking in the same direction, and eventually came to it. I gave the receptionist her latitude and longitude and she humoured me by writing it down. So we only got there at about 13:16 and we were able to check in early (instead of 14:00). We then went back to the train and went to Gamla Stan station (GAMLST) which was easy to get to since it was on the same (Red) line. From here the goal was to get to some famous sights in Old Town. This meant going East. There were at least 2 important sights, and they were so big it was impossible to miss them. But my wife managed to find a way, taking us North after just a small amount of East. This led us past some sight which was presumably (from looking at the map after the event), Riddarhuset (RIDHUS) and then over the bridge and back to the mainland (instead of the small island). Whilst we were over there we decided to walk around, part of the plan being to find somewhere to eat. We went past what looked like an anti-NATO protest (I could be wrong, maybe they were waving the Yugoslavian flags so that everyone would know what to look out for if you didn't want to be burned out of your home). At around that place we went into a department store, partly to warm up and partly to find out what Swedish computer keyboards looked like. We were only successful at the former. We went back to a Mongolian restaurant (MONGOL) which we had earlier passed, which was a typical Mongolian BBQ restaurant, as much as you can eat for 128 SEK. Well worth travelling all the way to Sweden to experience. Actually it was unusual, in that they had about 16 different sorts of meat. I didn't know what they all were though because they were only in Swedish, so first round was just a bit of everything. Second round I asked the person in front of me for a translation which they thought was pretty funny when they didn't know the word and resorted to "big bird" complete with flapping arms. I got confused by the end of the 16 that I decided to just wing it again. After that, I noticed that I had a waypoint from the internet for "Kungstragarden" which was nearby, so I decided to find out what was so special about that. If there was something, I didn't notice it. But I marked my own spot anyway (KUNGGD) from in front of the statue. We then decided to try to get those famous sights in Old Town again. I said we needed to go more-or-less south, and we started in that direction, but then my wife decided that we needed to cross a bridge (correct), but when I pointed out a bridge, she decided to ignore it, probably since it was too close. As far as I can tell, the sights in Stockholm are quite close together and if you know what you're doing you can just walk them. So we wandered east, then wandered some more, past the Kung train station (KUNGTR) until I pointed out that we were lost. It was then that my wife decided to ask the GPS for guidance, and I told her that where we wanted to go WAS "only" 1km away - across that ocean! Then she decided that a bus was the better part of valour, and so we went to the nearest bus stop. This was just outside some large drama theatre (DRAMA). They have maps on the bus stops so I took a look there and saw that the 91 bus which would take us to the hotel was nearby. I then read the map to indicate that we should go down the road a "bit". After a long walk with no "91" in sight, we decided that catching any bus back the other way was a better idea, so we did. I believe the 91 was just around the corner, just south of the drama theatre, but there has been no independent verification of that. The bus took us back a small distance until we spotted the "91" and got out. I then decided that it would be a good idea to find out what "natt" after the number meant. It sounds like "not", but it would be unusual to say that a bus, not called 91, travels this precise route. A bystander was able to tell me what it meant, which was "night", and when I questioned the precise definition of "night", given that it was already dark, the timetable defined that as about 01:00! She suggested catching a train instead, so we went to the nearby station (OSTERM), arriving at 19:29, which was even on our line! We were disappointed that the supermarket at the station was closed, but decided to call it a day. The next morning the alarm went off early, we woke up not so early, and went to breakfast. I wasn't sure what the correct procedure was, so after giving our room number I veered left, and then found a seat near the back. I don't know if it was because I was concentrating on getting to the seat, or because the sign was trilingual, with English last! (what's the hidden message there, western fascist pig dogs go home?), the end result was that we sat down and a waiter came up and asked us if we had a "sky class ticket". We replied no, and then wondered where to go, given that we'd rearranged some of the table already, and then I remembered that according to the lift buttons, we were indeed on the sky class floor, so I passed on that information. He then suggested we might have one and not even know it. He then produced a small credit card sized piece of paper, which my wife instantly recognized and said that we had one, should she get it. He said not to worry, and I gave my room number so he could check up on it. This gave us access to freshly squeezed orange juice, but we had to squeeze it ourselves. I was happy to drink the normal stuff, but on my second glass, there was a guy squeezing orange juice and I picked up the normal orange juice, started pouring it into my glass, both of which I was holding well away from the table, and all these glasses went tumbling, probably 6 glasses broken. Me and Orange Man looked at each other as to who was to blame, then I turned around and told the waiter it was neither of us, and went back to my seat. In actual fact I think it was a combination of us both. The precariously stacked glasses must have been getting vibrated by Orange Man with the electric squeezer thing. But the jug of orange juice must have been absorbing a lot of the vibrations. After I procured it, the table was now a lot more prone to shaking, and the house of cards came tumbling down. Anyway, I ended up having egg & meatballs, then porridge, then egg & meatballs again, which corresponded to my learning about the porridge availability. I also noticed the sign in the process, which actually said that the sky class ticket was needed to *have* the breakfast (in a separate area), not to actually *sit* there, so it was a pretty shoddy setup really. I've never seen anything like that before. Anyway, my wife said we only had the one ticket, so couldn't go back the next day anyway. When we returned to our room, my wife fished out our sky class ticket, which turned out to look a lot closer to a minibar usage ticket than a sky class ticket, when she put her glasses on. So our plan for the next day was to go right down the other end in the far corner, with a false beard for her and dark glasses for me. We decided to have another attempt at finding the sights in Old Town, and to be ready to go into the Royal Palace when our ticket ran out, so that we had to switch to our museum-included ticket. After getting out at Gamla Stan this time, my wife decided that I should navigate, so I chose to go east, with southern twists when the easterly route was blocked. This soon got us to some church (FURCH) which was quite nice inside, although I wouldn't have gone inside if my wife hadn't gone in, presumably uninvited, first, whilst I was wandering around the yard looking for satellites. We then wandered around south and east some more, walking along some streets with atmosphere (the cobbled street kind, not the cold and wet kind that Stockholm was to be for the first 2 days), until eventually coming to a statue (NOTMAS). There was some important square I was trying to find, where the King had massacred a large number of people, which led to some sort of revolution which in turn led to Sweden being created as a separate country. The square seemed to be too small for much of a massacre, I would have thought more people died on your average motorway accident than could have died here. Perhaps they queued up or something. The street name was right though, so my wife took a photo before I had made a final decision. I then went and found a street in front of the statue, and tried to find that on our two maps. I was in luck there, and decided that it was further up the same road. Sure enough, another block and we were finally in a spot that looked like a good place to hold a massacre. This square is called Stortorget (STORTG) and the massacre was in 1520. We seem to have missed a nearby church, Storkyrkan, which has a really old picture of Stockholm in it. We did see a large building in Stortorget square, but we didn't recognize this as the church. It didn't appear to be open anyway, but there might have been a back entrance or something. Apparently it's impossible to miss, so we must have seen it after all. The Royal Palace (PALACE) was nearby so I went there too, although it was ahead of time, in order to get a position before my wife got us lost again. A bit more wandering and we saw the big place again, then came in from the back of the palace and had a good view of the city, so took another photo. This was at about 12:00 and there was what appeared to be the changing of the guard. It wasn't anywhere near the same category as Buckingham Palace, but given that there was no-one in there to guard, allowances should be made. After about 15 minutes we headed in to visit the palace proper (which only opened at 12:00). It was quite confusing as to where you were meant to buy tickets (normal price 50 SEK), but the place we went to took our card without the need for a separate ticket which was good. We got to see the throne that the king sits on for coronation (only). Then when we got out they appeared to be changing the guard again. I asked the guards (who don't have to stand still like in the UK) why they were changing again, and he said before was just one person in the group changing, now they were all changing, and THAT was the big thing. This was due to happen at 13:15 and we didn't really have the time. I had taken a relative GPS fix from the map, for where the ferry was meant to be that my wife wanted to catch. I had made the fix relative to the train station, which was the nearest point for the best accuracy, but when we came to travel I used my compass with the bearing I remembered, which of course was wrong. Fortunately it wasn't very wrong, and when I realised what I had done all it meant was we'd done an L-shape manouevre instead of a zig-zag. We got to the spot the GPS had led us to, only about 20 metres away from the real ferry location (FERRY), which was excellent given that I can only enter distances in 100 metre intervals, the GPS is only accurate to 100 metres, and I had only used my finger to judge the distance against the scale! We were unable to use the Stockholm card to use the ferry, as the lady told us (and as I saw on a big sign above the lady later), and by the time we'd got the tickets and figured out whether the destination on the ticket was where we actually wanted to go (for some reason the ticket was printed in Swedish, I mean how insular can you be?), the ferry had left. We caught the next one about 10 minutes later. If there was something amazing we were meant to be able to see from the ferry, I managed to miss it, and would catch the bus if I had my time again. We got to the ferry port (FERRY2) on the other island, and then used the compass to veer us towards the Aquaria Water Museum (AQUARM), normal entry price 40 SEK. The aquarium was very well done. It didn't have the large sharks etc that you see in the Sydney Aquarium in Australia, but it instead had what looked to the fish and us like a complete tropical rainforest. Presumably most of this stuff was foreign. We then followed the signs to the museum (VASA) which has the oldest shipwreck in the world or something, anyway, it's a great looking ship, which sunk on its maiden voyage. They've done a real good job restoring that. Normal entry price 60 SEK. I made some relative waypoints to guide us to the next spots. After leaving we bought a hot dog from a stand outside for 10 SEK. Next stop was the Nordiska Museum (NORMUS), entrance normally 60 SEK, which had displays of old things, like old clothes. It was mostly dead boring, except for the dining table displays, where they showed the types of food that were available to the richer families through the ages. Apparently marzipan was such a delicacy at one point that although the underclasses couldn't afford it, they were banned by law from eating it anyway! After leaving there, we bought another hot dog for 20 SEK (going upmarket) plus a couple of snacks. We then caught a bus taking us towards the city, and then got off when we saw the big "T" symbol, which was the Karl train station (KARLTR). We got off there and there was a supermarket open so we bought snacks for dinner. I needed to get some things translated, and a number of the "traditional Swedish cuisine" things we thought we were buying because they were in a foreign language turned out to be made in Finland! The next day we woke up and it was time to take the breakfast challenge. Acting dead casual in our recently acquired Zorro uniforms, we passed the first checkpoint, took a sharp right, and to our shock the wing that we had planned to go to was shut, with no way of escape. So we did our best to blend in with the tablecloth of the other side, only coming out from under the table when we had finished what we were eating. I kept imagining seeing the waiter behind me as the one from the previous day, sometimes even the waitresses! He had blonde hair and that typical Viking "I'll lob off your head if you don't have a Sky Class ticket" look so common in that part of the world. I think he must only work on Sundays or something, because we didn't see him during the entire 3 minutes we took to wolf down as much food as we could before he came out of his lair. Then we went back to our rooms, and on the way for the first time we discovered that the rooms opposite us which had a view of the sea had "Sky Class" written on them, whilst ours didn't. So although we were on one of the levels which had Sky Class rooms, we weren't Sky Class. We decided that bolting to the reception desk to check out, pretending that we "didn't speaka the English" was the best way to proceed from here, although once it was obvious that the Great Sky Class Hoax hadn't yet been leaked to the rest of the staff I decided to find out some things I wanted to know but hadn't found anyone to ask. They had 3 extra keys on their computer keyboards, although she then reckoned she had 28 letters in their alphabet, until I told her that 3 extra made 29, then she didn't know what was correct. I suggested that maybe the V and W being the same in Swedish accounted for the mathematical conundrum, but she still wasn't convinced. I also found out that it is not true that the Swedes are required by law to keep a loaded machine gun in their home as part of their national defence, and that actually it's very difficult to obtain guns. She seemed quite shocked that I had asked that, a bit like the expression I've seen on other people's faces after I've asked them whether they they prefer to eat babies grilled or stir-fried. In the relative safety of the cold air outside (just like CNN predicted), we went to the City Terminal again, to try to catch a bus to the National Maritime Museum. There was quite a bit of confusion here, as we knew we wanted to catch the 69, and I knew where we wanted to go, because I'd made a relative waypoint, but I didn't know which direction to catch the bus. There was a nearby bus stop with the right number, but it was going what I considered to be the wrong direction. So we walked along our assumed direction of travel to find a bus stop on the other side of the road, but couldn't find one. We walked for ages the other way, and eventually found one. The bus stop the other direction was basically just around the corner from City Terminal but my wife had missed it again! To make matters worse, I'd actually seen our 69 bus, but before we'd decided on a direction and found a bus stop. So that meant we had a long wait for the next one, and my wife was just about to throw in the towel after waiting half an hour, because the next one was 2 minutes late. We needed to be in the subsequent museum before our ticket expired, because that was the main one. In the 69 I suggested we get out when the GPS was giving a range of about 400 metres, despite the fact that we had no idea where we were. Not only that but we didn't know what the Maritime Museum was called in Swedish, because that's all there was sign-wise, ie Sjohistoriska. And guess what, we got the exact right stop, thanks to the GPS and the accuracy of my finger for measuring map distances! So we got to the National Maritime Museum (MARMUS) at 11:12. The museum itself was largely boring and we were soon out of it. Normal entry price 40 SEK. When we got out the sun was shining nicely for the first time, just like CNN predicted, and the birds were singing, just like CNN predicted too. (CNN has a picture of the weather for lots of cities at regular intervals). We decided not to go back to the city to catch the 47 bus, but instead to just take the 69 until it ceased to take us closer to the next museum. We then got out and walked. We got to the museum with plenty of time to spare, so we actually did another museum, the Museum of Biology (BIOMUS) at 12:03. This was largely boring too. Normal entry price is 20 SEK. We then went to the grand attraction, the place where you can stay a whole day. That was Skansen (SKANSN), normal entry price 60 SEK. This was easily the best museum, it was an open air thing, covering a large area. They even had people in period dress doing what appeared to be real work in real workshops, making glass, making machine parts. Must cost a fortune to maintain. But the main attraction was the animals. They had otters, foxes and best of all, bears. We could have spent all day just watching the bears having a bath using a log as a lufer! But alas the time came to leave, and we caught a bus back to City Terminal. Our pass had expired by now so it cost 14 SEK for the trip. I used the GPS to decide when to get out, one stop late in hindsight. However, the extra stop gave us access to a traditional Swedish hot dog stand, so we tuckered up. On the trip back to Arlanda I noticed that I still had the track for the road, meaning the whole trip had fitted onto the GPS. However, the road started running out as I went up, so I realised I was right on the limit. It turned out that the earlier flight was to Gatwick, not Heathrow, so we had an extra wait for the Heathrow. By which time they changed the departure gate as well, so we ended up being one of the later people to board despite having booked in an hour before anyone else. At the airport my wife wanted to buy some chocolate for 29 SEK with a 50 SEK note, so my job was to spend exactly 21 SEK. You wouldn't believe how complicated that ended up being, I was in and out of shops doing the maths. Fortunately I ended up finding a combination, and not only that, but one of the items was a bar of marzipan, which if I understood correctly is the stuff that had been banned from the underclasses! We arrived at Heathrow (HEATHR) at about 20:00 BST, where I took the position at the bus stop for the 111 bus which goes right past our place. I decided to conserve track by stopping the log, then realised that the 111 might be useful for getting to work again, so switched it back on. I needed the GPS on to know when to get out. A further delay was caused when they decided to make us change bus at Hounslow bus station for some unknown reason. I previously had a comfy position for a track, but now I had to resort to sitting at the back of the bus, facing the back, hand outstretched to reach the back window! The things we do for track! We got home fine and the next day I was able to download the track to find out how much of the trip I had lost in pursuit of the 111 bus, and my very first track point was exactly at Gardet, which basically meant that I didn't lose any important track at all! So to summarise, the museums cost 330 SEK normally, so the Stockholm Card was good. I think the trip would have been done more effectively if we had waypoints for the sights we visited. I also got the impression that distances were quite short in the city, so we might have been able to walk around the city without needing to buy the pass, but the savings, if any, would be minimal. Actually, for the non-Stockholm Card travelling we did, we would have been better off getting 20 singles for 95 SEK, sharing them between us, and although we wouldn't have used them all, we would still have been better off. We also didn't get to go to some places we wanted to, such as the National Museum, because a lot of them are closed on a Monday, and also because we went before May. Also, I think we should have gone for the cheaper end of the hotels, although that is easier said than done, as there were no hits on the internet search we did. Also, I know why they banned marzipan from the underclasses - it's overrated, nay, a complete waste of money and they should reintroduce the ban.