I really liked Stockholm. Good fish to eat in the restaurants and surprisingly good beer to drink. We wandered trhough the old town and found an eccentric bike shop which sold and hired out Bromptons, had a poster for the 2009 Brompton Championship in the window and also had things like Brooks saddles and leather saddlebags.
Swedes have a very positvie attitude towards sunshine , they adore it, especially it seems, near water. The city is on several islands between Lake Malar and the sea and everywhere beside the water there were busy sunbathers. On a hot summer Saturday it seemed like the entire city decamped onto the ferries out to the enchanting rocky, tree covered islands which stretch for miles between Stockholm and the sea. They varied from tiny rocks to islands just big enough for a house, a hammock, a jetty, a summerhouse and a Swedish flag, to islets about a kilometre long and/or wide with tiny coves and beaches each with a complement of bronzed bodies.
In both Sweden and Norway, they really DO summer. They embrace it, they revel in it, they bask in its brevity.
