A Walk in the South of Stockholm

The other day I went for a walk with my host family in the south part of Stockholm city. I got to see the city from a different point of view and see new parts of the city! It really is a beautiful city that I have fallen in love with!

We started off our little day trip by catching the underground train to the south part of Stockholm city and then started of our walk. It is amazing how much history this one city has. Every street has some story, something worth remembering, a story worth retelling over and over again and worth being heard all these times!

We walked along the water front while my host dad told us some of the history of the different things we saw along the way. One of things was an old prison. It is no longer a prison but now a hostel and is really quite cool! A really neat place to stay I am sure. We then walked up cute little streets that Stockholm is so full of, up rocks to see a beautiful view of the city and then on another walkway by the water to wear we got to the best place to have a picture of the whole city from! After I had taken a ridiculous amount of photos and gazed out over this amazing city with a renewed realisation of just how beautiful this place really is, we moved on to Gamla Stan or in English, Old Town. This place stays true to its name. It is very old, in fat it is the oldest place in Stockholm and is older than New Zealand by a long shot! In winter Gamla Stan was like a place taken right out of fairy tale, covered in snow and Christmas lights, how a white Christmas had always looked in my mind. But in summer it takes on a new type of beauty. The sun shining down over these narrow, cobble stoned streets, casting shadows all over, flowers of all colours in pots outside all of the shops and people everywhere from all over the world. I love this place and all its oldness!

We then started on our way to the centre of the city and as we walked past the castle we noticed a lot of people standing around waiting for something. So of course we joined in the waiting around fun! It ended up with being the change of the castle guard. This was a really cool thing to see and a case of simply being in the right place at the right time. There was a full blown marching band who put on one hell of a good show as far as marching band shows go! There was also a fair bit of yelling on one man’s behalf and a lot of marching for all involved! It was a really cool thing to get to see and I am really happy I got to see it before I left!

After the changing of the guard we walked to a place in the middle of Stockholm city called Kungsträdgården. In winter this is where the outdoor ice skating rink is, but in spring for a whole one week it is where the blossom trees are and boy are they amazing! Along with nearly all of Stockholm we were there to look at these amazing trees that lined this amazing park!

After that it was time for an ice cream and then to catch the underground back home!