06 | June | 2022 | The Cannon Family's travel blog

We awoke today to screaming sunshine…. at 4am! Luckily we had the sleep masks from the plane which allowed us to manage a few extra hours of kip and we finally got out of bed at 8:30. A hearty breakfast of bacon, eggs, and toast and some nice strong coffee and it was time to explore.

We decided to walk as much as we could today but as a backup we bought 3 day transit tickets which were, of course, on our phones. The sky was an impossible blue without a cloud in sight with temps in the mid 60s. You couldn’t buy better weather. As it is Sunday, we didn’t expect to find much to do but we had read about a lovely pedestrian district where there was “cozy shopping” and coffee shops so off to Haga we went. The word they use for coffee stops is “Fika” so we took advantage of the wonderful weather to enjoy a fika ourselves. We wandered all over, popping into a few shops that were open before finding a lovely cafe for lunch with tons of gluten free options. A local brew for Frank and champagne for me were the perfect complements to the spinach and halloumi pie with a variety of sides (hummus, olives, red cabbage salad, etc) and a lovely bowl of soup.

We continued to walk about town which required a stop at a chemists for plasters (blister starting to form on my small toe due to poor shoe choice) and sunscreen. Because who packs sunscreen when they go to Sweden? Not us. But we absolutely needed it! We wandered all over town, eventually stumbling into the main shopping area which was MOBBED with people. Every store you can think of was there as well as a few boutique-type places. The perfect place to people watch, especially if you hate shopping!

Between the weather and the 3 day weekend (tomorrow is National Day where every one is off work and they apparently eat strawberries and wave flags), there were people everywhere. We noticed a few things:

Sneakers are an important part of EVERY outfit. Dresses, shorts, dress pants, leggings. It doesn’t matter. Everyone wears sneakers. And every store seems to sell them.
Everyone under 30 has a lot of ink. Okay that’s a broad statement. There are lots of people over 30 with a ton of tats as well as many young people without any but I was amazed at the ratio of tattooed people to tattoo parlors (many to few relationship).
Body positivity is rampant. Besides the stereotypical slim Swedish blonde, there are people of all shapes and sizes who seem very comfortable wearing all manners of clothing. Like I said, amazing people watching.

Eventually we decided that we needed to break in our transit card so we hopped on some trams to wander farther afield than the blisters would allow. We popped back into the flat for new shoes (bless my Birkies!) and then headed to various parts of town to alternatively take picturesque photos and rest with a drink in the sunshine.

At 6pm, everything that was open finally closed and the crowds thinned out. Well the shopping crowds did. The drinking crowds stayed firmly entrenched at sunny tables outside a variety of pubs. And that’s when the staggering became obvious. We found a seat in the sun outside a lovely pub where we sampled more local beverages and were then accosted by a very drunk man who felt drawn to talk to Frank. He was sober enough to recognize the accent as Scottish but drunk enough to not realize when he stopped speaking English and slipped into Swedish. All I could get from the conversation was that he drove a truck delivering fish and that he loved me. Frank may draw them in but they fall for me. 🙂

Eventually we extricated ourselves from that conversation and found our way to a fabulous burger bar that had gluten free options. Frank had the most amazing old fashioned and I had the most unbelievable burger. Thus sated, we started the walk home with only one final pit stop at an outdoor pub for a final drink. Then it was back to the flat to get ready for tomorrow.

Data for today: