Three Swedens: the archipelago, Gamla Stan, and the dark sky above Kiruna.
Which archipelago boat actually stops at an island. What a morning behind a dog team costs. Whether the Vasa or Skansen wins your one museum afternoon. Reviews of every tour you can book in Sweden.
Out to the skerriesfrom $39
Gamla Stan on footfrom $11
Aurora nights up northfrom $59 A boat, a warship, a ghost story and one clear Arctic night.
The four bookings a first Swedish trip is built around. What each costs, and what the people who took it say.
01The first afternoonCity Archipelago Sightseeing Cruise with GuideThree hours through the inner islands with a guide who names the houses. The single most booked thing in the country.
02The museum daySkansen Open-Air Museum Admission TicketA whole country laid out on a hill on Djurgården, farmhouses, church and all, with the city below it. Go early and stay for lunch.
03The evening walkGhost Walk and Historical TourExecutions, plague pits and the narrow lane, told in the dark in Gamla Stan. Book it for a night you have nothing else on.- 04The night up northKiruna Northern Lights Tour with PhotographerA photographer drives you away from the Kiruna glow and shoots you under the aurora. The one booking worth flying for.
In Stockholm the good day starts at a quay.
The archipelago begins a twenty-minute walk from the old town and runs for thirty thousand islands. Four ways out onto it, what it costs to board each one, and which city it leaves from.
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.4 · Archipelago Boat Tour
Archipelago cruisesA guided deck through the skerries, three hours or the whole day.
Kayaks and canoesPaddle the channels yourself, with someone who knows which island has the swim.
RIB speedboatsSpray, a survival suit and the outer islands inside two hours.
Gothenburg canalsFlat Paddan boats under bridges you duck for, then out to the west-coast rocks.
All 25 boat days in Sweden →
Stockholm first, then whichever train or sleeper you fancy.
A capital built on fourteen islands, a west-coast port of canals and café streets, a bridge town that shares a metro with Denmark, and two Arctic bases under the aurora oval.
Gamla Stan is four hundred metres across and takes three hours.
The old town is one island of ochre alleys, rune stones set into house walls and a lane you can touch both sides of. Guides here do the executions, the plague and the royal scandals better than any plaque manages.
Stockholm: the water in the morning, Djurgården after lunch.
Everything in Stockholm →
The city runs on ferries, so start on one. Then the museum island, then the old town when the day trippers have gone back to their ships. These three carry more travellers than anything else in Sweden.
- 1Archipelago Boat Tourfrom $39
- 2Highlights Boat Tourfrom $39
- 3Stockholm Pass: Save up to 50% – Includes Vasa Museum Ticketfrom $95
Guided cruise, or the commuter ferry
A guided boat names the islands and serves you a coffee. The public ferry out to Vaxholm costs a fraction and shows you the same water, with nobody explaining it. Pick by whether you want the story.
The Vasa, or the whole country on a hill
The Vasa is a single warship raised whole from the harbour. Skansen is an open-air museum of the entire country with a zoo attached. On one afternoon the ship wins; with children, the hill does.
Södermalm, bakery by bakery
Cardamom buns, a herring plate you would not order alone, and a stop where the aquavit is poured without comment. The walks work south of the old town, where Stockholmers actually eat.
Sweden’s most booked days out.
Every Swedish tour review →What Swedish travellers actually spend their days on, and what earns each one its place at the top.
1
Archipelago Boat Tour
Spend two hours cruising from Skeppsbron through Stockholm’s island world. An English-speaking guide such as Joel, Natalie, or Jonatan shares stories about Swedish history, royal life, local customs, and the boat. You pass Djurgården Canal, Fjäderholmarna, Stora Höggarn, and Tegelön, with indoor seating, an upper deck, blankets, and a small onboard bar.
From · $39
Read our review →
2
Highlights Boat Tour
from $39
3
Stockholm Pass: Save up to 50% – Includes Vasa Museum Ticket
from $95
4
Walking Tour of Stockholm Old Town
from $24
5
The Original Stockholm Ghost Walk and Historical Tour – Gamla Stan
from $38
6
Stockholm Archipelago Cruise with Guide
from $47
7
Nobel Prize Museum and Exhibition Entry Ticket
from $18
8
SkyView Glass Gondola Ride
from $19
Above the Arctic Circle the night is the attraction.
Kiruna and Abisko sit under the aurora oval, and the dark season runs from September to late March. Around it: dog teams on frozen lakes, snowmobiles out to a mountain station, and a hotel that is cut out of the Torne river and rebuilt from scratch every November.
Every day out in Lapland →
Gothenburg, Malmö and Uppsala are three easy trains out of Stockholm.
Gothenburg runs flat little Paddan boats under bridges low enough to duck for, and keeps its café life in the wooden houses of Haga. Malmö shares a metro card with Copenhagen. Uppsala has the cathedral, the castle and the burial mounds of the first Swedish kings, an hour up the line.
- 1Archipelago cruise with guidefrom $47
- 2City Canal Sightseeing Cruisefrom $30
- 3Go City All-Inclusive Pass with 20+ Attractionsfrom $47
What a day out in Sweden actually costs.
Every tour on the site, grouped by price. Sweden has a reputation for expensive; the old-town walks and the museum tickets have not heard it.
Old-town walks, museum and gallery entry, the hop-on boats and the self-guided routes.
- 1City Archipelago Sightseeing Cruise with Guidefrom $41
- 2Skansen Open-Air Museum Admission Ticketfrom $27
- 3Archipelago Boat Tourfrom $39
Guided archipelago cruises, food walks, bike days and the Viking countryside runs to Sigtuna.
Aurora nights with a photographer, dog teams, snowmobile expeditions and the trip out to the ice.
Three things Sweden does that nowhere else does.
Every country has an old town and a gallery. A warship raised whole out of a harbour, an afternoon written into the working day, and a hotel that melts each spring do not travel.
The Vasa
A warship that sank on her maiden voyage in 1628, a thousand metres out, in front of the entire city. She sat in the harbour mud for 333 years, which is exactly what saved her: the Baltic is too cold and too brackish for the shipworm that eats wooden wrecks everywhere else. Raised in 1961, she stands whole under one roof on Djurgården, ninety-eight per cent original timber.
- 1Skansen Open-Air Museum Admission Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 3,427 reviews
- 2Stockholm Pass: Save up to 50% – Includes Vasa Museum Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.1 · 2,392 reviews
- 3Nobel Prize Museum and Exhibition Entry Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 4.3 · 994 reviews
Fika
Not a coffee break. Fika is a stop with a name, a pastry and other people in it, and it is written into the working day rather than squeezed around it. Ask a Swede and you will be told the cardamom bun is the point, not the coffee. The food walks build a whole afternoon out of it, from the bakeries of Södermalm to a century-old konditori in the old town.
- 1The Nordic Food Walk Stockholm★★★★★★★★★★ 4.5 · 642 reviews
- 2Skip the Line: Disgusting Food Museum Entrance Ticket★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 359 reviews
- 3Secrets of Gamla Stan Guided Tour w/ Fika Option★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 · 282 reviews
The Icehotel
At Jukkasjärvi they cut the Torne river into blocks in spring, store them through the summer, and rebuild the hotel from nothing every November: new artists, new rooms, the same river. In April it melts back into the water it came out of. Day tours run from Kiruna and Abisko for everyone not sleeping at minus five.
- 1Guided Tour to Icehotel and Jukkasjärvi★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 28 reviews
- 2Explore the Icehotel★★★★★★★★★★ 4.2 · 16 reviews
- 3Explore the Icehotel, Day Trip from Abisko★★★★★★★★★★ 5.0 · 6 reviews
Four Swedish bookings that will not wait.
Most of this country can be arranged over breakfast. These four run on daylight, ice and a river that keeps its own calendar.
- 01Guided Tour to Icehotel and JukkasjärviThe building is cut from the Torne in spring and gone by late April. There is no summer version of it to fall back on.
- 02Kiruna Northern Lights Tour with PhotographerAurora trips only run in the dark season, and the photographer-led ones cap their groups hard. Clear nights in February go first.
- 03Sit Down Husky Ride Dog Sled Tour in KirunaA kennel can only send out as many teams as it has dogs. In February every sled around Kiruna is spoken for weeks ahead.
- 04Guided Kayak City Tour & Optional Midsummer MealMidsummer is one weekend in late June and the country closes for it. Anything still running that weekend is booked months out.
Stockholm gets six hours of daylight in December. Build the day around it.
Midwinter sunrise is after half eight and the light has gone by three, which is either a problem or the entire reason to come. Book the outdoor hours first and fill the dark end with things that have a roof — or go north, where the dark is the attraction rather than the obstacle.
What Sweden eats: fika at three, herring and aquavit at seven.
Cardamom buns and filter coffee in the afternoon, then the smörgåsbord order everybody gets wrong — herring first, then the cold plates, then the warm, and never all at once. The Stockholm food walks run the whole sequence.
By place — capital, coast and Arctic north
By kind of day — deck, walk, sled or table
Gamla Stan, Djurgården, the islands, then the sleeper north.
Gamla Stan
Djurgården
SödermalmThe newest Swedish tour reviews.
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