We tried to sleep in as long as possible as it was our last day of our trip, a long travel day. We enjoyed the hotel breakfast once again, and watched a Japanese family of four managing their two little kids with skill. The dad gave the kids a boiled egg for them to peel while mom got her food – the eggs kept them busy and quiet.

After breakfast we went up to our room to chill out and try to use every last minute before the check-out time of noon. We were surfing the web and playing video games and I realized that the hotel WiFi was broken – it was switching on and off – so in this way I burned through most of the remaining data on my eSIM without realizing. Bummer! 

We had a do not disturb sign on our door but despite that someone knocked, and when I answered the door two housekeepers looked shocked and apologetic. Maybe a mix-up, but maybe they just wanted to get a jump on cleaning. Either way, they were early and we were still entitled to stay. I was just trying to be horizontal for as long as I could.

Finally we checked out and stored our suitcase in the hotel’s locked storage room while we went for lunch. We had a target restaurant that looked good, but when we got to the area it seemed hard to find. Eventually we realized it was downstairs inside a shopping center, and it looked super busy. So we went back outside and looked around.

Every time we travel in Europe we see kebab places – and we love kebabs, but it always feels like a wasted chance when we could eat the local food of wherever we are. But since we tried and failed, it seemed like a good time to get a kebab. There was a busy kebab place nearby that had an automatic kebab meat slicer running – high tech! I had a kebab wrap, which Kuniko had a falafel wrap and they were both excellent. We drank lingonberry soda with them, and it was a big, messy meal but very delicious.

Back at our hotel we went to pick up our bag from the storage room. I joked with the staff by asking if we could take any one we wanted, and he joked back that he recommended the bigger suitcases for more loot. But seriously, we could have taken anything and they wouldn’t know whose was whose. Weird system.

From there we got back on the Arlanda Express (using the savings trick we learned coming in) and we were able to do early check-in at the airport. The kiosk was a little weird and wouldn’t print out my boarding passes, but at the desk everything was fine. 

We went through security and on to a bar for drinks and to recharge our devices. We had a great corner seat at a big mainly empty place, so we killed a couple hours using our phones, reading, playing games, and drinking beers. 

Closer to our departure we stopped at a really stylish bar/restaurant for sparkling wine, and had one of the best meals of the trip – a big open-faced shrimp sandwich. It was so good! Much higher quality than typical airport food.

We caught a three hour flight from Stockholm to Istanbul, and had a little time to kill in the airport as we awaited our connecting flight. We knew better to drink Prosecco here, and we weren’t super hungry after the snacks on the plane. So we just chilled out by the gate until the line started moving to board. 

We sat next to a high school aged Japanese girl, part of some kind of group of other school kids scattered throughout the cabin. She kept to herself during the flight, and Kuniko and I could do some serious sleeping. Once again we were able to sleep through about eight of the eleven hours on the plane before arriving in Osaka. 

We got lucky with immigration, our suitcase and customs so that we caught the next bus to Kobe, and then from there we took a train to Nishi Akashi and a taxi back to our home, as is our tradition. All our souvenirs survived the trip, and we had a cold bottle of champagne waiting for us in the fridge. 

It was another great summer trip for us. We really like the vibe in Europe and exploring new countries there is a great way to escape the summer in Japan. But as we look to the future there are only a few more countries left unexplored in Europe, and as we get older we might want to look around some other places, too. We might change things up next year – who knows?

We slept a solid 9 hours, maybe the days and days of walking around are starting to catch up with us! 

Our hotel breakfast was one of the better ones of this trip, with a good layout that is designed to handle a lot of people. We enjoyed eating our eggs, fruits and yogurt at a relaxing pace, along with some unusual juices that really hit the spot. 

We started that day by heading on foot across town to the Vasa museum. As we crossed town we had a lot more chances to see all the beautiful buildings, especially on the waterfront. The air was cool and the weather was beautiful – hard to imagine what kind of humid hell people were going through back in Japan. 

There were not so many people at the museum as we arrived just at the opening time, and we used online tickets to enter. The Vasa museum centrally displays the 64 gun warship that sank on her maiden voyage in 1628. It was salvaged and restored, and the museum is beautifully designed to give you a feel for life on the ship, and see all the details that went into building it. Just looking through had me thinking of Master & Commander. 

Once we finished with the museum we walked around the area to take pictures, especially of the compelling buildings. There were plenty of trees and it was a very natural setting. 

From there we set out in another direction and found ourselves at the Ostermalm’s Food Hall, which was our kind of place. Full of local ingredients, meat, fish and vegetables, this was a gourmet heaven. Luckily we arrived with full bellies otherwise we’d have maxed out our credit cards.

In a department store nearby we browsed through all the candies looking for souvenirs for our students back in Japan. There were endless varieties of Swedish black salted licorice (an acquired taste) but also some more palatable options so we stocked up there. I was surprised to see so many candies from other Scandinavian countries – not so many local to Sweden. 

We dropped off our souvenirs back at our hotel and then went to lunch at Bistro Bestick. It was quite close and promised traditional Swedish food. The staff were curious about Kuniko, and surprised that I spoke Japanese. At first they spoke to me in Swedish so I guess I blended in. 

We started with bubbles and then had a great lunch: Reindeer meatballs, and some cured salmon in sauce with potatoes, egg and salmon roe. It was a great meal, and we were really getting our meatball cravings satisfied. 

Off we went to see the Parliament House, and there were more tourists out on the streets by now. We walked through the grounds of the Parliament House and back behind to the Royal Palace, half of which was under renovations. Nearby was a culture festival with live music, and we saw many food trucks lined up. I noticed that all their menus and signs were only in Swedish, so meant for locals, not us. There was a fair amount of security guards walking around the area, too.

At Kuniko’s request we visited the Nobel Prize museum, and it was worth the stop. The exhibits showed a background of the winners, and sometimes some personal memorabilia indicating the Eureka! moment that helped them make the connections that earned them the prize. Some were pretty odd – a jar of a favorite kind of peanut butter, for example. Overhead there was an automated track system with little runners that carried a banner for each of the Nobel prize winners. Each one had a chance in rotation to go around the room introducing the winner. It was unique and fun to watch.

Finally we walked back to the hotel for a little rest and to do some journaling. Mostly we hung out in the hotel bar to await the cleaning of our room, and we played shuffleboard a few times, too. Eventually our room was cleaned so we went up for a short nap to build up energy for the evening.

For dinner we walked to Knut Upplandsgatan, and sat outside the restaurant in the beautiful weather. Some great dishes here, including Plate from the North: a sampler of moose sausage, vasterbotten cheese, smoked deer heart (yum!), reindeer steak, prosciutto cured with pine needles (excellent!). Also crayfish tails on dark rye with radishes and shoestring potatoes. We were also served spiced bread and butter mixed with whey. 

When we first arrived one person set us up at the table, and while we talked another guy suddenly came up with a notebook and said hello, and I thought that it was somebody looking to conduct a survey. But it turned out that it was our waiter, and he had been just a bit tentative (perhaps wondering what language to open with). Later he said that their sous chef is from Japan, but unfortunately we didn’t get to meet them. With dinner we had a nice South African Cabernet Sauvignon – we ought to go visit there sometime!

After dinner we got some lingonberry caramels that were excellent – unfortunately we couldn’t find them in stores anywhere. But we did more walking around to explore new areas. We did a little more shopping at an upscale supermarket, and Kuniko bought salmiak tablets for her coworker. We walked to a nearby church (Gustaf Vasa), and then saw a metro station and on a lark bought tickets. There was no machine, but a very nice lady sold us tickets from a window, and I was struck again about how nice everyone was to us on this trip. 

As we approached the gate to the station with our tickets a bunch of police were marching a young woman away, don’t know what was going on there. 

We traveled from that station, Odenplan, to old town Gamala Stan. The train ride was smooth and in a modern design, but not really that special. But at least we had a chance to ride a train in every country on this trip. 

We walked around old town again, this time there were fewer tourists as the tours were finished and it was dinner hour. Slowly we worked our way back towards the central area, but sat on the waterfront a bit. A young family were fishing for their dinner – the wife and husband both had poles while a little kid played nearby, crying quite loudly. Another fisherman thought he had something, but he only pulled up seaweed. 

We went to Radisson Blu’s bar for a final cocktail, with the bartender winking (a little excessively) to each customer before making the drinks. Kuniko had a tropical twist which was tasty but the egg white merengue was a little too sweet. My drink was a ginger/basil/cucumber refresher that was very nicely made. 

Finally we went back to our room and crashed out, the end of an active day of sightseeing and eating.

Since we knew the breakfast at our hotel was busy early on, we made sure to arrive just a few minutes before 6 am. There were plenty of people eager to start eating. The way the buffet was laid out was that there were plenty of approaches to the food – it was an open style, and some people just started going up to get started. One staff member was yelling to stop because it wasn’t ready yet, but other people saw the first people grabbing food and thought it was time. Seems like they need to organize a little better.

Our breakfast was just as good as the previous day. Next to us a young Japanese couple took an inventive approach – they each filled their plate with different things and then set up a tiny buffet at their own table – sharing what they had and making sandwiches. It was a cute idea but we tend to fill our own plates. I think we’ll keep our strategy.

Around us the tables filled up quickly and there weren’t enough to go around, so we wrapped up our meal quickly and went upstairs to free up space. It was raining pretty consistently outside, so we spent time after breakfast lounging in the room, packing and organizing, and then we checked out. Some previous research found that the light rail station that we wanted was just on the other side of the regular train station, and there we used a kiosk to buy tickets. The tickets were sent by SMS to Kuniko’s phone, but they were not appearing. Strangely when we changed the phone number to mine, they arrived. But in the end nobody checked anyway, so no worries. 

The light rail ride was about 45 minutes to the airport. The windows fogged up due to the rainy weather, so we couldn’t see a whole lot of scenery. At the announcement of each stop they played a little jingle of music that was different for each stop. Inside the tunnel a long LED strip was placed in cascading shapes so that it worked like an animation as the train moved by. These little touches made the ride go by more quickly for us.

At Bergen airport we had a seamless experience.  We checked in via kiosk, put our suitcase onto the automated luggage drop off system and said goodbye to it. We went through security into a large common area, and commented on the lack of duty free shops – they are usually ubiquitous when we travel. Then we went off towards our gate, and then we saw that our gate was through a one way door, once we went through there then we were in the international area of departures and yes, of course they had duty free shops. We made a stop at a sports bar for two glasses of sparkling wine and an order of French fries (great combo). 

We waited at the gate for boarding, and I got into the leftover rose candy from Bulgaria. The white sugar powder from the outside had leaked a bit in my bag, and suddenly I looked like some kind of rose candy cocaine freak – white powder everywhere.

We boarded the plane, and this flight had us sitting separately for the one hour flight. This was thanks to our travel site, Kiwi.com, which tries to charge extra for seats next to each other. But it could have been due to Norwegian Air Shuttle – this was our second time flying them and again I was not impressed with their service. 

The plane had a lot of Spanish people who tended to speak with very loud voices, but it was good practice for my Spanish listening skills. Across the aisle from me I saw a single Japanese woman reading her Japanese guidebook for Stockholm, maybe her husband was sitting elsewhere in the plane.

Once we arrived I was surprised to see how aggressively everyone pushed forward to got out as soon as possible. When it was our turn I nodded to the Japanese woman and said, “Please, go ahead” in Japanese. Her eyes got big but she seemed appreciative. Kuniko I met outside the gate and then got our suitcase fairly quickly. The next step was train tickets on the high speed Arlanda Express to the city center. We had just started the process to buy two single tickets when a lady ran up and said, “Stop!” in English. She showed us that there is a discount ticket for groups of 2 or more, and so we saved some money. That’s great but why not change the system so that it is more intuitive? Why pay a staff to stand there all day and point out the savings?

It was a 20 minute ride on the very comfortable high speed train, very similar to the ride into Oslo a few days ago. I’d have to give the Oslo train better marks as it seemed newer and I preferred the more modern design. 

Kuniko had booked a hotel right next to the central train station. The lobby was nice, a bar in the corner – good sign. They also had two long shuffleboard tables (which are always fun), and hidden somewhere in the back was an “ice bar” – a bar constructed completely of ice that requires polar wear to enter and drink. We never did get in to try it but my first impression was that it was too gimmicky to be really enjoyable. 

We had a very comfortable hotel room, but we wasted little time in dropping off our bags and heading out to explore the city. We crossed the bridge to the south and found the Riddarholmen Church, then turned around and saw the rest of Galla Stan island – and couldn’t believe that there were so many beautiful buildings. We walked from building to building, snapping pictures and just in awe of the whole thing. The old town area is compact, mainly on cobblestones, and makes for an easy walking adventure.

Of course there were tourists as we had gotten a late start arriving in the city, but the narrow old town streets kind of separated the crowds and it didn’t seem so bad. We stopped for drinks at a random cafe, and the waiter who took our order looked like a teenager. I had a local beer to start, and on a lark ordered a pear cider since we had such a nice apple cider back in Bergen.  But this was a sweetened drink that reminded me a lot of Zima. Ugh. 

For dinner that night we stayed in the old town and ate at Slingerbultin. We had made reservations online, and a cool-looking manager inside rocking an 80s heavy metal mullet took our order. He was having a great time laughing with everyone and seemed like the freest spirit I’d seen this trip. Behind us a big group of Japanese tourists took a table, and Kuniko and I were joking about the “motto motto, Takemoto” jingle from Japanese TV, and how that group would have their minds blown if I said it loud enough for them to hear.

Our appetizer was a beet and goat cheese tartin, and our entrees were a plate of Swedish meatballs, and cod with a mussel sauce. The dishes were excellent (especially the beet/goat cheese tartin) and we had some red wine by the glass with our meal. The staff who was pouring chatted with us a little bit and we were struck by how everyone seemed so genuinely friendly here. After leaving there was a long line waiting to get inside, so I was glad we had made the reservation. 

We headed back to the central area near the train station and continued to walk around. We explored an underground shopping area that reminded us of Whity back in Osaka, and we did some shopping at the local market for yogurt, Keks chocolate for tasting, and then finally crashed out in our room for the night.