Sweden holidays 2012 - Part 1: Stockholm and Fooooood

From left to right, Caroline, Danny, Aryan & Chris

How do you even begin to summarize 16 days of holidays?? Well....you simply don't. At least not if you had an amazing time and certainly not when you have more than 1600 photos to show exactly how amazing that time was........so after a bit of thinking, I've decided to split it into separate photo blog posts. This is part one ;))

We traveled with Chris's sister Caroline and her boyfriend Danny. They arrived one day later than us and left one day earlier, but besides that, we were all together.
You will notice from the photos below that the Stockholm days were actually mainly focused on food, besides traditional sightseeing..... Under the photos, you'll find links to the various restaurants and sites etc. we have visited this time, worth recommending ;))

On arrival, we went with Aryan and one of her friends to Berns Asiatiska to eat their amazing sushi.
Very very good food and service!!

Knowing that Indian food is one of Caroline and Danny's favorites, Aryan reserved us a table their first eve in Stockholm at Indian Garden in the south side of the city. Apologies for the image quality!! It's taken with my iPhone with veeeeery bad lighting ;)

My main course was delicous!! I had Shrimp Papaya Balti.....with Naan of course.

The gorgeous Old Town of Stockholm. A must see.... Walking around here is fab!

.....talking about musts ;)) Soft ice in Sweden is absolutely delicious and in the Old Town, you find lots of places that serve these with various toppings. Here, one chocolate dipped!

Danny went for Marshmallow topping =p 

One of the great things about visiting your own country with visitors is that you are "touristing" and visiting places you wouldn't normally think of visiting. Here we are at "Skansen" which is a Swedish open air museum and Zoo. The perfect place for people who want to get a feel for our Swedish culture and fauna.

A Reindeer.... Lovely animals! 

This little cutie is not an official part of the Skansen animal attractions, but it's worth a visit just to see these! There are plenty around and they are incredibly tame....they even climbed up on our legs =)))))

Just outside the entrance to Skansen, you will find a restaurant called "Ulla Winbladh" who has fabulous traditional Swedish dishes and possibly the best meatballs in town ;)) We went there after our Skansen visit and nobody was even the slightest bit disappointed!

.....I had another Swedish classic - Lightly salt cured salmon served with dill creamed potatoes and lemon!
Divine!!!

Me and Aryan

Here, we are walking around the charming little "city" of Sigtuna. Small and insignificant as it may seem, it is the oldest city in Sweden and has this really cute small town Swedish charm to it. On top of that, it has some really cute little shops and great food and pastries.

Here some photos from the amazing little cafe "Tant Brun"! Please please don't miss this if you're in the area.....trust me! It's worth going here for nothing but these Cinnamon buns and their coffee alone!! As Swedish as it gets ;)

A must when visiting Sweden is this - Shrimp sandwich (this one is also from Tant Brun, as above)!!
Please make sure you try one with fresh, hand peeled shrimps to get the quality experience!! One of the things I miss the most from Sweden and one of the first things I order when I go home. Yuuuuuummy!

On our last evening in Stockholm, Aryan took us to a lovely little Persian restaurant called "Kharazmi".
We had a kind of meze plate with various little appetizers that were delicious!

I had the Meigo Polo, a kind of spicy shrimp risotto.
I had this already last time I was there and loved it so much I went for the same one again ;))

Later on during our holidays, we came back to Stockholm from the Archipelago for a day and took the opportunity to visit Chris's and my favorite Asian restaurant in Stockholm - East. 

Chris and Danny went for the classical option.....

.....and I, since I'm pregnant, went for tempura and cooked style rolls instead. SUSHI.TO.DIE.FOR.

I'm guessing at least 1 or 2 extra kilos were added to me during these 4 days! Ha ha haaaaa!! Will be worth the effort to get rid of those later though for sure.

xox