alte oper

Frankfut's old opera house, on a beautiful blue-skied day this week.

postcards from stockholm

1. Östermalms Saluhall, Östermalm
2. & 3. Vasa Museum, Djurgården
4., 5., & 6. Coctail & Coctail Deluxe, Södermalm
7. & 8. one of the Fjäderholmarna islands
9. Djurgården
10. Gamla Stan, ferry to Fjäderholmarna islands
11. & 12. bridge between Kungsholmen and Södermalm
13. Swedish post hot air balloon as viewed from the city

stockholm eats and drinks

  

  
I never have to worry about whether or not I'm going to eat well when I'm traveling with Megan and Lucy. Our priorities always skew toward deliciousness.

Where we ate:

- Lux, Lilla Essingen: a Michelin-starred restaurant that does an excellent and quite reasonable lunch special? Yes, please! The day we were there it was tiny lamb burgers served with fresh cooked vegetables and an amazing butter-filled potato puree. We also had amazing slightly sweet bread to start and raspberry ice cream to finish. Mmm.

- Taste of Vietnam, Södermalm: we ducked in here when it was pouring rain and we'd waited too long for dinner, with the thought that phở is never unwelcome. It was delicious! And, bonus: our waitress told us about the next day's zombie walk, which we ran out of Creperie Fyra Knop to watch.

- Creperie Fyra Knop, Södermalm: a filling but not too huge lunch (mmm, raclette crepe) just off Götgatan and its many lovely design shops. The atmosphere made us think of Sweden in winter, but in a cosy way.

- Fjäderholmarnas Krog, on one of the Fjäderholmarna islands: Lucy and I took Megan here for a birthday surprise. Lucy wasn't terribly impressed by the service, and it's definitely got special-occasion prices, but worth it. The reindeer carpaccio appetizer was Megan's favorite (and possibly also mine), but everything was wonderful, from the butter with pink salt to the other appetizers (smoked herring and local cheese on thin wafers and cauliflower gelatin topped with truffles and fried onion) to the mains (crispy rainbow trout with cauliflower puree, mushrooms, and poached egg; beef with crispy fried potatoes; and pierogi stuffed with vegetables and cheese) to dessert (salted caramel ice cream and a cappucino that I spilled all over the table).

- Brunkebergs Bageri, Vasastaden: I'm slightly obsessed with this little bakery. Everything we tried was A+ delicious. Also, there was a tiny half-Swedish half-American girl singing the Pippi Longstocking song in Swedish and dancing with her eyes closed while her American mother chatted with us and shook her head. If I lived in Stockholm, I would be here basically daily.

- Café Sirap, Vasastaden: brunch is huge and very delicious. There was more (tasty!) bacon than I could eat, and I can put away a lot of bacon. The blueberry pancakes looked better than they tasted, but the coffee and fresh orange juice were lovely. Also, the crowd was almost uniformly poorly dressed yet extremely attractive.

- Planet Food, Östermalms Saluhall, Östermalm: delicious wraps in the market hall! There is nothing not to like about this.

Where we drank:

- Kaffekoppen, Gamla Stan: we didn't much like the looks of the sandwiches, but for an afternoon coffee or tea while people-watching, it's unbeatable.

- A café of which I do not know the name, Södermalm: just around the corner from the Stockholm Stadsmuseum, cattycorner to the bank at the base of Götgatan, but strangely not showing up on Google. Cozy, with lovely hot chocolate, but if you order tea, make sure to get the milk on the side -- my tea, pictured just above (right), looked like a tall glass of hot milk that a teabag might have glanced at sideways but never actually touched.

- ICEBAR, City: described at length in my previous post (but keep in mind, it's a bar! made of ice! just go.).

- Lady Patricia, Södermalm: as mentioned before, it's a gay bar on a boat! It's also a rather popular restaurant, though we'd already eaten (at a non-descript but quite okay Thai/sushi place across the street from the ICEBAR). We snagged couches on the upstairs deck and people watched for a while before dancing.

Anddd I'm officially missing Sweden now.

ICEBAR

  



Possibly the highlight of four days in Sweden with Megan and Lucy: the ICEBAR. We were initially a little less impressed than expected. We thought it would be a bar COMPLETELY OUT OF ICE, and well, it's mostly ice, with a metal floor; the drinks are tiny, though delicious; and if you go anytime other than on a Friday or Saturday after 9:45 p.m. you have a time limit for how long you're allowed to stay.

But in spite of the things that were not quite what we thought they were going to be, we were still in a bar made of ice wearing ridiculous hooded parkas with attached gloves and sipping tiny drinks out of glasses made of ice while David Guetta pumped through the sound system. We started dancing around like fools the moment we arrived and did not stop hamming it up until our time at the ICEBAR was up -- at which point we promptly relocated to Lady Patricia, because when there is a boat that is also a gay bar, you need to check these things out.

the blue coast

  




  

(full photo set here)
I spent a four-day weekend on the Côte d'Azur (French Riviera) based out of Nice, the name of which city lends itself to so many good puns. But Nice really is nice. I went to four different beaches along this stretch of coast: Cap d'Ail, Juan les Pins, Villefranche-sur-Mer, and Nice (listed in order of awesomeness). Cap d'Ail's Plage Mala (with the red umbrellas and the sheer cliffs rising out of the Mediterannean Sea) was the best due to sheer stunningness of scenery, though Juans les Pins (where a Canadian girl I'd met at the hostel and I snuck onto a private hotel beach, until we were regretfully requested to vacate the premises) was also stellar. And this is not to say that the beaches at Villefranche-sur-Mer, with its adorable old town, or Nice were not lovely, too, though the "pebbles" at the beach at Nice are really more like fist-sized rocks. I recommend paying the EUR 14 or so for a padded beach recliner, in spite of not having done it myself.

Other highlights of the trip: the view from Èze Village, over terracotta roofs, gorgeous coastline, and yachts; a brief visit to Monaco, which looks like Disney and Louis Vuitton teamed up to design a country; and the market at Nice, where I showed a great deal of restraint and bought only 1.5 liters of Niçoise olive oil to cart home, in addition to a couple of olive wood utensils, herbs de Provence, etc. I think that sometime in the future an excellent vacation would be to rent an apartment somewhere with a beach and also a wonderful market, and spend the whole time cooking delicious things, lounging by the sea, and people-watching from the balcony, which would naturally have a great view. Noted for future vacations!

Though not for my next vacation -- four days in Stockholm with Megan and Lucy, starting, ahaha, tomorrow. Because returning from Nice on Monday night and flying to Stockholm on Thursday night is totally a thing that people do.