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Published: July 19th 2009
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After two and a half months in Sweden I felt the need to spread my
wings a little outside the confines of Stockholm and its inner archipelago (well, Vaxholm to be precise). New partner in crime Rachel was up for a weekend away so we set off to Sweden’s fourth largest city, Uppsala.
Uppsala is a city famous for its university, its cathedral and as the long-time home of Carl Linnaeus (for the forgetful scientists among you he was the one that invented the system of binomial classification that is still used in identification of plant and animal species). It’s also smaller than Bromley. A fact which shouldn’t really surprise, given that Sweden has a population of only 9.2 million.
Saturday morning dawned and it was due to be one of the hottest weekends of the year... so instead of heading to the beach like most Swedes, we headed to Central Station and on to the Uppsala train. The city is only about an hour away from Stockholm so could be done as a day trip but we thought we’d take our time and spend the night there too.
Our Saturday itinerary was something like this:
* wander
from our hotel to the river and stroll along its banks
* stop off at the cathedral (the largest in Scandinavia) and take a look around - in my opinion the interior is rather more impressive than the exterior and makes it obvious why it took over 100 years to build
* find a lovely waterfront restaurant for a spot of lunch (delicious salmon salad at Åkanten, a restaurant recommended by my Swedish ski instructor Petra!)
* more strolling around the town - up to the castle and then into the botanical gardens which were very pretty and the setting for a number of wedding parties having their photos taken
* a late afternoon decision to take a bus out to Gamla Uppsala. Gamla Uppsala was the original location of the city of Uppsala until it was moved to its present location in the late 13th century. It is the site of three huge burial mounds said to hold the remains of Viking kings and was host to a number of bloody rituals in mediaeval times
* dinner at another very nice riverside restaurant called Salt followed by an evening at Flustret, the local nightclub/live music venue
We decided
to fit in Gamla Uppsala on Saturday as we’d spotted a boat trip to a local castle which we wanted to take on Sunday. So Sunday morning arrived, we checked out of the hotel (having made a sneaky sandwich or three from the breakfast buffet) and hauled our tired and slightly hungover selves down to the riverside where we hopped aboard the Kung Carl Gustaf and set sail to Skokloster castle. The boat trip itself was a very pleasant couple of hours, first down the river (which was actually rather reminiscent of the Norfolk Broads) and then a stretch across Lake Mälaren.
Unfortunately when we organised this trip, it turned out that my two contacts who live in the city were actually away for the weekend themselves! Petra wasn’t back at all so I still haven’t seen her since the last Fairmont Friday in Whistler back in March, but Chris was due back in town on Sunday and invited us to the barbecue he was going to in the park. Our boat trip got back to Uppsala around 4pm so we found ourselves a restorative ice cream and wandered through the park to find him and a bunch of
fellow expats. A couple of relaxing hours chatting and lounging in the park and our weekend was over. All in all a successful foray outside of Stockholm and hopefully the first of many trips to come! Uppsala is a very pretty place but you can see the majority of it easily in a day trip if you were so inclined. But it was a learning experience for us - next time we’ll plan our time with scale more in mind 😊
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