1. The city itself is beautiful and is actually composed of 14 islands. Söderströmriver flows through central Stockholm connecting Lake Mälaren with the Baltic Sea. I loved walking along the river banks from Normalm(commercial centre) to Gamla Stan(Old Town) and Djurgården (Museum Island).

2.The Vikings were first and foremost raiders. They pretty stole anything they could. This was all possible because of their superior long ships. Light and fast, they were equally at home both in open sea and on rivers inland. The Kings of medieval France and England paid off Vikings and even ceded territory at times to avoid constant pillaging. The Swedish History Museum has a separate section on the Vikings. 

3. The Vasa museum is built around a ship that wasn’t even sea worthy but they have done a amazing job of preserving and maintaining the ship for centuries now. Try the tour and learn more the rich naval history of the Nordics and the hidden details about what ultimately led the Vasa to be chained to the harbor.

4. The Stockholm City Hall is worth a visit just for the Golden Room. It is Swedish opulence at its finest. Also, the Nobel Prize dinners are hosted here. So, you can claim to have walked the same corridors some of the brightest minds in the world have passed through.

5. Stockholm was surprisingly vegetarian friendly among all the countries in Scandinavia. Even McDonalds had not one but three solid veggie options – Veggie burger, Vegan burger and Falafel nuggets. There are a tons of falafel and Shawarma shops all over Stockholm thanks to recent to the middle eastern diaspora. Maxos Falafel was my favorite. Helmed by Nidal Kersch, it aims to showcase his Arabic heritage to the Swedes  by bringing food from Jerusalem.

6. The viennoiseries and cakes in Sweden are second to none. It seems under rated compared to French or even Italian recipes. We remained steadfast to the Fika tradition every single day of our stay alternating between buns and princess cakes. I absolutely loved the Cardamon buns and pretty much anything from Vete-Ketten.

7. Stockholm seems to be most cosmopolitan of all the Scandinavian capitals I have visited. It helps that Stockholm is the tech hub of Scandinavia thanks to massive recent successes of Spotify and Klarna. Sweden it also home to Ericsson, Assa Abloy, Electrolux, Volvo, Skanska and IKEA.