Whether made for politics or pleasure, Persian luxuries at the British Museum delight the eye

I'm usually lukewarm, at best, on British Museum special exhibitions drawn primarily from the existing collection. With typical prices for museum shows averaging above £15, it's stretching visitors' good will to charge for something normally on show for free. The current exhibition on luxury in ancient Persia and Greece, however, brings enough magic in its assemblage to overcome my scepticism. The handful of items not from the home store include an astonishing hoard of golden treasures from Bulgaria's National Museum of History that’s worth the admission fee on its own.
Luxury and Power: Persia to Greece digs into an old, familiar story and largely debunks it. Anyone educated in the West grew up with a narrative of us v, the East that’s lasted for more than 2,000 years. The Greeks started it, telling us their democratic, egalitarian, plain-living lifestyle is what ultimately triumphed over the luxury-loving Persians. That’s because all that extravagance, mixed with an authoritarian monarchy, made the Persians weak, effeminate and lazy. You don’t need to be a classical scholar to have drunk this in. Just watch 300 … or any grass-roots politician railing against elites … to see the dynamic alive and well.

Yes, there’s a lot of blingy Persian luxury in these galleries … and that’s probably the main reason for going … but you’ll also learn how the Persian establishment promoted and strategically deployed that luxury to keep power. And you’ll see copious proof of hypocritical Greeks, protesting against luxury but creating and using Hellenised versions for themselves.

If there’s one item that summarises the whole idea of luxury here, it’s a rhyton; and there are a lot of them here. A rhyton is a horn-shaped container used for drinking ceremonies, usually featuring animals but sometimes people.  Contrary to appearances, however, you don’t drink out of it. You hold it in one hand, your shallow drinking bowl in another, then a servant pours wine into the rhyton, which emits the liquid from a hole in its front in a steady stream which you’re supposed to catch in your bowl. This is the kind of ritual you only design to show off, and the amount of coordination required to drink this way would take a lot of practice. Which you’d probably be willing to do if your barware was this extraordinary. 

A set of silver blockbusters hits you on entry: not just the elegant griffin that’s on the exhibition poster but an antelope, a man on a horse and several others along with examples of the drinking bowls they’d spout into. There are other lovely examples throughout the show, culminating in the eight glimmering objects of desire … some animals, some human heads … from Bulgaria’s Panagyurishte treasure. Whatever their composition, you’d stand in amazement at their delicate workmanship. The sinuous buck’s horns. The proud female heads. The boldly-rearing centaurs on an unusual, vase-shaped rhyton with two holes, probably designed to cement peace treaties (and guard against poison) by spouting out two servings at once. But the fact that these are all made from glistening, solid gold kicks the wonder up to another level.

The last piece in the exhibition is a Roman glass model, from hundreds of years later and now meant to be drunk from directly, with the hole filled in. It’s a nod to the enduring love of this glamorous design, and the fact that the Romans carried on the luxury debate and hypocrisy.

From the Greeks, we get a whole case of their version of the rhyton, more miracles of animal artistry but here made from glazed terra cotta to protest their humility. Pushing from aping the tradition to full hypocrisy is a ruler from the Greek world, immortalised in a panel from the Nereid Monument brought up from its usual home downstairs, who is showing off the whole two-handed serving technique. Don’t miss the marvellous human touch of his dog crouched beneath his couch, perhaps waiting to clean up spills.

These objects alone would almost be enough for the show. But we go much further. Jewellery, housewares, clothing and decorative objects all show off the Persian flare for conspicuous consumption and the Greek’s grudging, democratised copies. 

A particularly innovative aspect of the show is incorporating videos of modern craftspeople creating the same opulent objects today. One shows the creation of the colour purple, from the harvesting of a particular gland of the Murex snail to its boiling or drying to get various forms of pigment. In another, a modern Japanese glass artist demonstrates how coloured glass rods get heated, wrapped around a plaster core then smoothed together to create an exact copy of an ancient bowl on display next to the screen. Most fun is a modern textile artist, using ancient sources to weave and recreate a royal outfit, complete with dangling golden lion’s heads and enamelled metal trim. Met Gala catwalk, eat your heart out. 

This isn’t a large show. It’s up in the galleries above the Reading Room, not in the main exhibition space. But every item within it is a rare joy. By bringing it all together in this context the curators have elevated things you might have walked past for years into a treasury of precious objects that will drop your jaw and leave you wanting to win the lottery. You can go out afterwards for a bit of wine and some discussion on whether luxury makes you weak. Maybe even with a rhyton. But I’d wear a bib. We haven’t lost our taste for extravagance, but I suspect we have given up the knack for showy, two-handed alcohol consumption.

Norwegian fjords, mountains and waterfalls are the undisputed high points of our trip

Words don't do justice to the Norwegian landscape. Take magnificent, awe-inspiring, incredible, jaw-dropping and spectacular. Mash them up. Increase their emotional impact by a factor of 10. At that point, you might be getting there. 

While Norway's cities far outstripped my uninformed expectations, its mountains and fjords delivered exactly what the tourism industry promises. Quite simply, one of the most impressive displays of the majesty of the natural world that you'll ever see. A landscape of soaring peaks, towering waterfalls and mirror-like stretches of water in which humanity seems insignificant. The only experience in my life that can compare is taking a helicopter into the Grand Canyon. But Norway, thanks to its expanses of water and trees, is far more beautiful.

Our introduction to the deep fjords came at Stavanger, gateway to Frafjord and Lysefjord. I thought our experience would be limited on two fronts. I’d somehow managed to miss booking the tour up the fjords on a rib boat, and by the time I remembered our ship’s opportunities were sold out. But it seemed that wouldn’t matter, because we cruised into Stavanger harbour in fog so thick visibility was less than 50 feet. Even if you had the radar to navigate, there was nothing to see. But the BBC and the locals on the harbour side said the fog was due to lift at mid-day, some sun was burning through the mist and Fjord Safari, operating from the harbour a short walk from our ship’s birth, had two spots on its noon departure. We thought we’d take a risk and hope the fog would lift. It was one of our best decisions ever.

Visibility was up to a few hundred feet and the sun was peeking through as we left Stavanger harbour, but the moment we started up Frafjord it closed in again. The journey felt like something out of a high fantasy film as we sliced through glass-smooth water enveloped in the grey mists, almost on top of islands as they’d appear on one side or the other of the rib and then slip away. I realised just how much trust we were putting in our captain, Sven, because we were travelling blind. And then we started hitting pockets of clarity, where we’d see a stretch of water, a chunk of blue sky and a mountain top or two in the distance. But it wouldn’t last; we’d be back in the gloom in seconds. Slowly but surely, the open spaces became bigger and the mists smaller, until the latter were  banks of cloud floating over the water. Sun and blue skies took over completely as we turned into Lysefjord, an impressive suspension bridge spanning its width. 

Mountains towered on either side, occasional pockets of greenery near the water before the grey granite rose straight up. The water hardly moved, reflecting the world above in its inky depths. Behind us, the wall of fog remained. It was like we’d travelled through some perilous underworld to emerge in a magic new land. Our captain later admitted he’d been holding back tears; in more than 10 years of making that journey multiple times each working day, he’d never seen it so beautiful. 

There were “sights” to be seen in Lysefjord: Pulpit Rock, a cave at the back of a crevasse where bandits once hid out, a particularly striking waterfall plunging directly into the lake. But, to be honest, it was all so gorgeous as to be indistinguishable in its wonder. 

There were other boats here, and you can get cheaper tours, but the rib is the way to go. Once you climb into your all-weather suit (add a hard hat and you’ll look like an oil rig worker), you straddle a saddle-style seat, hang onto the bars in front of you and go at high speed. Sunglasses or goggles are a must for protecting your eyes, and people who chill easily may find the fresh wind on their face unendurable. But I loved it, particularly when Sven cut across the wake of other boats to give us some bounce on an otherwise placid day. The speed of the rib also means you get to spend more time in the glories of the deep fjord and less time getting there.

Stavanger itself is worth a wander, particularly for its picturesque old town. Uniformly white, clapperboard houses with decorative eaves, each garden was overflowing with blooms. Turns out the jet stream works here the way it does down the coast of the UK, creating a garden-friendly microclimate that meant even though we were further north, the state of the gardens was closer to home than Oslo. 

The next day found us in a small town called Eidfjord, at the very back of more than 100 miles of fjords snaking inland from the sea. Back in Stavanger, if you hadn’t booked something todo there were still plenty of ways to amuse yourself. Not so in this wildly picturesque spot. If you don’t make arrangements to get out of town, you’ll spend the day walking around the edge of the fjord and looking up at the encircling mountains and distant waterfalls. Which is no bad thing. But you’re in the district of Hardanger, which even many Norwegians, who are used to all this mountainous spectacle, consider the prettiest part of the country. You want to get out and see more.

We’d booked an outing to the Viking village of Gudvangen. Bottom line: the village billed at the main event was rather underwhelming, but the day was redeemed by the spectacular 90-minute drives in each direction to get there. If the journey had been any less glorious, we would have found the day’s hefty price tag to be a rip-off.

It’s not that Gudvangen was awful, it just doesn’t live up to its marketing. A lower price tag, a better lunch and a bit more attention to its margins and it might have been as memorable as the ride to and from it.  The village is a collection of traditionally-built Viking-style houses on the tip of a fjord, populated by historical re-enactors, some of whom are there long term and others from all over the world who apply to do a holiday here playing at being a Viking. With its international workers and its attention to set design, it’s all a bit Disney. And there’s nothing wrong with that. The problem is that Disney creates a complete illusion, removing all signs of the outside world  from your experience. 

That’s clearly the intent at Gudvangen, but a petrol station and sign looms over part of the village and traffic is clearly audible (and sometimes, with high lorries, visible) on the road outside. We were dropped off in a slightly bedraggled holiday village to walk into the Viking experience. Gudvangen doesn’t come down to the water’s edge; a fleet of small, modern holiday craft for hire cluster there while you walk up to the village gateway. Exiting through a gift shop was no surprise, but the fact that the volunteers weren’t aware of the meaning of the symbols on the jewellery they were selling was. And the gift shop empties into a cafe and a car park that has the feel of a truck stop in the upper Midwest. 

In this less than perfect illusion, guides do an excellent job of taking tours around key points in the village explaining Viking customs, religion, food, technology and fashion. Specialist colleagues worked at various shops … the weaver’s, the smith’s … and explained what they were up to. You could wander into the chieftain’s house, ask him questions or take him on at a Viking game similar to chess. Booths for archery and axe throwing let you get into the action. Clearly built for large groups, a banqueting hall saw us sitting at long tables and eating a three-course Viking menu of soup, roasted pork and yogurt with fruit. It was deeply average, and totally missed the opportunity to elevate things with a horn of mead and a bard telling us tales of the gods while we ate.

Fortunately, we were blessed by a tour guide from whom we learned more about Norway in three hours on the bus than in our other three days in the country put together. The fact that she was a young Italian woman is an interesting commentary on the global nature of the tourism industry these days. The scenes along the drive were so gorgeous as to make Gudvangen an almost inconsequential comfort stop rather than a main event. 

We visited two spectacular waterfalls on par with any of the ones so famous in Iceland. We stopped at a picturesque hotel to look down a monumentally deep valley with jagged mountain sides that’s captivated generations of Norwegian artists. We made our way down hairpin bends and drove through precious farmland carved out of anything not vertiginous. As the only Brits on the bus, we were highly amused by some “Say No to EU” barns. (And wished someone would have tested the viability of getting a “Norway-style deal” before we jumped off our cliff.) We drove around lakes that reflected their surroundings with the clarity of mirrors, and crossed bridges so high we were practically flying. 

Later that day, to the accompaniment of a sinking sun that wouldn't set until almost 10pm, we sailed down Hardangerfjord to return to the sea. Mile after mile of mountains, forests and the occasional farm making the most of some level earth. When smaller fjords branched off from the main one, whole new vistas opened, like gateways into new worlds. The soft colours of twilight made it all the more magnificent. Most of the passengers seemed to be on the outside decks and there was a hushed atmosphere. Even after two days surrounded my such beauty, it was inspiring a hushed awe.

Gudvangen, I could take or leave. The day’s drive through the Norwegian countryside, the rib safari in  Lysefjord and the sail out Hardangerfjord were my undisputed high points of our Scandinavian adventure.

Efficient, beautiful and cultured: Norway's cities surpassed all expectations

Fiction abounds with stories of time travellers who find themselves in a futuristic society, marvelling at advances and feeling primitive in comparison. You don't need to imagine that. Just visit Norway.

Staggeringly efficient infrastructure drops the jaw. Massive tunnels cut through mountains, complete with underground intersections and roundabouts. Lights change patterns and colours to keep drivers alert. In other mountains, streams are directed through giant turbines to produce energy while the magnificent landscape appears untouched by human hands. In cities, vacuum tubes below the streets whisk recycling to the appropriate disposal plant; when relevant it's burned, with carbon capture, and the energy diverted to schools and old people's homes. Whether in city or countryside, there's not a scrap of rubbish or a splash of graffiti. I saw no derelict buildings or grubby parts of towns.

Fleets of sleek electric ferries whisk cars and passengers around the coast, roads appeared free of potholes despite incredibly harsh winter conditions and car charging points are abundant. All that renewable energy may seem surprising in a country that's the 12th largest producer of oil in the world. Turns out the Norwegians don't use much of their oil, nor do their citizens take its profits. The country ploughs the money into that spectacular infrastructure and saves for the future. 

Is it any wonder I felt that I'd stepped back into a broken, inferior past when I returned to Gatwick Airport?

My introduction to this remarkable country left me wanting more. A return, and a push much further north than our ending point at Bergen, is now on my bucket list. Our sightseeing divided between the urban and the magnificently rural, with days in Oslo and Bergen and another two amongst the fjords. I'll cover the cities in this entry and come back to the fjords next.

OSLO

Given that my reference point for Scandinavian cities was Copenhagen, Oslo felt like I was back on familiar ground. While Stockholm sprawled and demanded public transport to get from place to place, the historic heart of the Norwegian capital is, like the Danish one, compact and easily walkable. The main difference, of course, being that Oslo is ringed by mountains. While the metropolitan area spreads up those slopes, pretty much everything a first-time visitor will want to see is within strolling distance of the waterfront. 

The city centre sits on two bays divided by a promontory once guarded, and now merely beautified, by Akershus Castle. 

The bay to the east was once the industrial heart of town and is now under intensive redevelopment. The strikingly modern opera house sits on the water here, as well as the new Munch museum. The main train station is a few blocks off the waterfront and big ships, both industrial and passenger, dock on this side. (Our smaller vessel put in right next to Akershus, but locals told us all cruise vessels are soon to be banned from this picturesque spot.) Most of the east bay, however, is taken up with glittering modern office towers, many with architecture as interesting as the opera house, which is supposed to resemble an iceberg. I suspect if you were coming to Oslo for business, you'd spend your time on this side.

The key tourist sights, however, are off the west bay, which is a good deal more picturesque with its handful of masted sailing ships and old steamers tied up at the piers. Historic buildings and parks frame the waterfront. Both dominant and aberrant on this scene is the City Hall, a charmless lump of mid-century modernism. It's exterior is "enhanced" by sculptures that look like they came from the same factory that supported Stalin's PR machine. Everything else is so damned beautiful up here that you have to forgive the city hall, however. Like a warthog amongst the sleek animals of the African bush, its ugliness makes it loveable in contrast. 

The inside of the is more attractive and definitely worth a look, since you can pop in for free. A vast, open space shows off murals celebrating the lives and traditions of the Norwegian people. It's still all in that disturbing fascist/socialist style that makes you worry the thought police are nearby to haul affluent capitalists off to a labour camp. But some of it is pretty. If it looks familiar, it's because this is where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded every year. My star sight at the building, however, is to be found in the landward-facing courtyard outside, where large carved and painted panels tell stories from Norse myth.

The heart of town lies just beyond this, with a theatre, university buildings and grand hotels and businesses of the 19th century. They surround a long, rectangular park dotted with statues of worthy Norwegians. Everything slopes up hill, and a grand avenue on the inland border leads to the monarch's palace. It's ringed by parkland, adding to what feels like a very green city.

When left to my own devices, my top objectives were Akershus Castle and the Oslo History Museum. (First choice would have been the Viking Ship Museum, but it's closed for a major renovation for at least another year.) 

In a league table of Scandi capitals with the best Viking loot on display, Oslo's History Museum brings up the rear. But if you're here in pursuit of the Viking past, as we were, then it's still worth a visit. There's one main display gallery with an array of artefacts arranged in old-style cases. Clearly, the Oslo curators put all of their attention into the rotating displays; the current focus is on animal imagery. Here you'll find state-of-the-art interpretations with dramatic lighting, music and holograms, plus a lot of gorgeous stuff. Bears, eagles, ravens, pigs, horses and more all get the sinuous Viking treatment, working gold, silver and gems into everyday objects to elevate them to priceless art.  The museum building itself, though not worth going out of your way for, is an unusual mix of Viking revival and art nouveau.

Akershus Castle was built centuries after the Viking era, though it shows off a similar martial brio. It's primarily the creation of Denmark's Christian IV, who wanted a suitably royal, Renaissance-style palace when he visited. (Norway was part of Denmark at the time.) While a good deal less lavish than his main residence at Rosenborg, it's still a beautiful building to wander through and offers wonderful views out over the harbour. The best comes at the very end, with a newly-restored stained glass window in a medieval hall. The restored glass only dated from the early 20th century to start with, but was medieval in its inspiration and had been almost totally destroyed in a terrible fire. The current masterpiece of light, and the video that explains the process of its rebirth, is worth the admission fee.

A bus tour included by the cruise company got us to two key sites beyond walking distance. The first was the Vigeland sculptures in Frogner Park, which seems to be at the top of every tourist itinerary here. The magnitude of Gustav Vigeland's achievement is obvious: 212 statues created over the span of his career, plus metal gates and fountains. No wonder it's often called (inaccurately), Vigeland Park. The problem with the dominance of one man's vision, of course, is that you really need to love his work to love the place. And I fear Vigeland's blocky, naked figures left me a bit cold. They writhe, they play, they fight, they love. Some even battle dragons. But they all seem a bit lifeless in their stolidity. I thought the figures in the metal gates were his best work here, and rated his lesser-known brother Emmanuel's window at Akershus ... yes, same family ... more beautiful.

The trip continued on to Hollmenkollen ski jump. Had I been an independent traveller I wouldn't have spent my own money or time to come up here to see an out-of-season sports venue, but it certainly has a novel appeal to those who come from places where athletes don't routinely throw themselves off mountains. Once you take a look at the slope, however, and wonder how anyone could have been mad enough to invent this activity in the first place, there's not much more to do up here than admire the view and look through a wildly overpriced gift shop. The best thing to see is a wonderfully lifelike statue of a dog (far better than any of the Vigeland stuff, IMHO) who's broken free from his owner and is wrecking havoc in the landing zone of the jump slope. Norway may appear perfect, but evidently dogs here are badly behaved here, too. 

BERGEN

Given Bergen’s position alone on a coastline of dramatic wilderness in the Far North, I was expecting a bigger version of a charming fishing village. Wrong. Norway’s jumping off point for trips even further north is just as sophisticated, cosmopolitan, affluent and beautiful as the capital. Sure, there’s a charming historic harbour graced with another impressive royal castle (this one solidly medieval) and a commercial waterfront dating from Hanseatic trading league days, now a UNESCO World Heritage site. On our visit a dramatic tall ship was in town. All very snug, quaint and old world. 

But the suburbs stretching into the hills and islands beyond are modern and obviously affluent, other areas of the town centre show off Victorian and early 20th century civic pride, and stretches of gleaming glass office buildings celebrate university and technological prowess. 

Sadly, we had less than a full day to explore. And by that day … the last full one of the cruise … we were running low on sightseeing fuel. While we enjoyed one tour, we didn’t have the energy to push into town on our own that evening. Bergen needs a return visit.

From all the tempting options on offer, we’d chosen an escorted tour to composer Edvard Grieg’s house with a concert on site, plus a stop at one of Norway’s famous stave churches on the way back.

I have become a lot more discriminating over the years in my cruise excursion booking, and now tend to only go for options that would be complicated and hassle-filled to put together on your own. This one qualified, as both sites were well out of town and not near each other, though both are open to the public and you could, in theory, make it here on your own. 

Grieg’s house at Troldhaugen is definitely worth a visit for classical music fans, but I wouldn’t recommend the journey for even the most devoted without the addition of music. (Though ours was a tour-specific concert, there are performances here daily at noon.) Otherwise, there’s not all that much to occupy you. 

The composer’s place, on the tip of this particular promontory, greets visitors with an intriguing modern sculpture of him in profile and a sleek, modern visitor centre. Inside you’ll find a small museum that explains his background, musical philosophy, lifestyle and enduring love story with his wife, Nina. I’ve never visited a museum dedicated to an individual that’s done a better job of presenting its subject as a wholesome, loveable, nice person. In an age of flamboyant romantic composers, Grieg was an unremarkable good guy, delivering on his projects, regular in his habits, beloved of his friends, supportive of his community. The museum goes out of its way to point out that not only did he go on record, publicly, against the miscarriage of justice that was the Dreyfus Affair, but he refused to meet Wagner (the quintessential example of a bad man who produced great art) because of the German composer's anti-Semitic views.

Grieg's house is a comfortable but modest late Victorian affair, two stories of wood with big windows, and carvings decorating the eaves. A glassed-in front porch takes in the views, which are magnificent. Visitors only see a few rooms on the ground floor, stuffed with the Griegs' personal mementoes including presents and letters from friends around the world. Unfortunately management had just changed its rules, not allowing outsiders to guide in the house but not providing their own guides, so our rushed walk through was disappointing. 

The main point of the visit, however, was the concert. That delivered. There's a purpose-built hall here tucked into the hillside, its grass roof making it almost invisible from the gardens. Inside, an ultra-modern auditorium seating about 250 slopes steeply to a stage holding a single piano, framed by an enormous window behind it. Thus the music of a man constantly inspired by nature is delivered in front of it. This is the same view he composed to, from a garden hut immediately below. The music was all too brief ... half an hour's race through a procession of beautiful melodies. Most evocative, for me, was Wedding Day at Troldhaugen. Not only one of his most familiar works, but the one written about the very home we were visiting.

On the way back to the ship we stopped at a replica of the Old Gol stave church. The original, moved from another location in Norway, is in Bygdøy Folkemuseum, but this exact copy stands in parkland and is easily accessible without an admission fee. IF you know where you are going. The bus brought us through a residential district, parked at a traffic circle next to a retirement complex and then we walked for five minutes down a woodland path to come upon the church in a clearing. It's an impressive and romantic setting, made more so by the fact we were the only people there at the time. Sadly the building is surrounded by an ugly chain-link fence and the interior isn't open to the public much. The extra security came in after a group of Satanists snuck into the place and burnt it down. (It was almost reassuring to learn all wasn't completely perfect in Norway.) So this is actually a replica of the replica.

Fortunately, traditional woodcarving skills must still exist here. You'd need to be far more of an expert than I am to tell copy from original. Stave churches are wooden constructions from the earliest years of Christianity in Norway, always made of wood (the load-bearing posts are the staves), characterised by steep roofs and decorative Viking-style carving. The Gol church builders were hedging their bets, with Old Norse dragons roaring out of all the eaves that sheltered the Christian rites. This is a beautiful spot and deserved to be lingered over with a sketchbook and silence. But that's not the way organised trips work. So after a 15-minute photo stop we were on our way again.

I've always thought the sign of a good holiday is leaving a place too soon. I certainly departed Bergen with a wistful sigh. We'd barely scratched the surface. But Norway's cities were just the starter course. The main event was all about nature. For that, read my next story.

Familiar Copenhagen and a new take on Aalborg provide a welcome mid-cruise change of pace

Having Denmark in the middle of an intensive cruise itinerary full of undiscovered destinations provided a welcome respite. Stopping in places we knew … Copenhagen and Aalborg … meant days we could relax, sleep in, and simply dawdle without feeling the need to tick any sightseeing boxes.

There are still, of course, many places we haven’t visited in the Danish capital despite years of travel to my husband’s childhood home. But the cruise pulled into port here on a Monday, when most museums and cultural attractions were closed. The Carlsberg Brewery is closed for renovations. We were practically forced to simpler objectives. Do a bit of shopping. Visit with family. Get some proper food.

People tend to rave about food on cruise ships, and with nine cruises under my belt on three different lines I am not sure why. Sure, there’s the advantage of quantity and convenience; hot and cold running nibbles and a full bar whatever the hour. The cost control of pre-paying and having everything included certainly limits one of our usual holiday pain points. But however you dress it up it, the reality is mass catering, with flavour profiles limited by target audience common denominators and choices skewed to safe international favourites. I’m guessing all the menus are developed in corporate test kitchens and repeated for destinations, whatever the season, to simplify complex supply chains.

In Denmark we knew exactly what was waiting for us on shore. Why eat mass produced, finished-from-frozen pastries on board when we could have the real thing in the country that leant its name to the danish. So both days started with skipping breakfast and getting to local delights. Early enough, hopefully, to be able to enjoy local beer and smørrebrød (open faced sandwiches) by lunchtime.

The first stop in Copenhagen was full of childhood memories for my husband. The food halls in the basement of Copenhagen’s iconic department store, Magasin du Nord, are where are the Bencard family headed after services at the English church to pick up Sunday breakfast and the English language newspapers. Today, the bakery here is the multi-city chain Ole and Steen. Yes, I can get the same pastries from their branches in London. But there is something special about eating them here. 

Next to Dahls Flagfabrik, which had been closed during our Christmas holidays. The Danes are the only people I know who take their flag as seriously as the Americans. In fact, they’re probably more intense. After all, the Americans got their banner from Betsy Ross, but the Dannebrog was a gift direct from God. In the Middle Ages things were going badly in a battle for Danish King Valdemar when a red pennant with a white cross fluttered down from heaven. The tide of the battle immediately turned.  Modern Danes now not only fly the flag for patriotic reasons, but use it to celebrate anything. Flags on the Christmas tree. Flags stuck into birthday cupcakes. Tiny flags scattered like sequins across holiday tables. And long, thin versions often flutter over summer parties. We felt the need to add to our “patriotism box” in the garage, and Dahls was the place to do it. If it comes with a Dannebrog on it, this shop near Nørreport station sells it. They also have a room with flags of everyone else’s countries, too. In case you ever find yourself in Copenhagen and need something to fly, you know where to go.

Then it was off for a wander in the King’s Gardens at Rosenborg, where I was last strolled in the gloomy half-light and drizzle of Christmas break. It was still a bit early to see the royal rose garden in full bloom, and I had just missed most of the flowering bulbs, but the cherry trees were putting on a spectacular show and the castle looked fabulous under cobalt skies.

Having stretched time until we could logically eat again, we were off to Torvehallerne market. I had been reading about this as a redeveloped hotspot on the foodie scene for years, but we had never gotten there. Rather embarrassingly, it turned out to be just a short walk from the hotel that was our home for a fortnight over the Christmas holidays. (Yet another reason to love the 25 Hours.)

Two long glass and iron halls frame a large courtyard between them. On our visit, the open-air area was stacked full of top-quality fresh vegetables, including long rows of greenish-white asparagus. Turns out the Germans aren’t the only ones who prize spargel at this time of year. The halls balance butcher’s counters, fish stalls as impressive as anything we saw in Tokyo and speciality booths with a handful of spots serving ready-made food. Most popular amongst these was Hallernes Smørrebrød, serving an array of artfully crafted open-faced sandwiches that were almost too beautiful to eat. Almost. 

After a bit more aimless wandering and a lot more sitting in the sun sketching while enjoying local beer (shout out to the newly-discovered Tuborg Red), we headed for Hviids Vinstue, one of Copenhagen’s most charming and historic drinking establishments, to meet with friends and family. The all-aboard deadline came too quickly. 

We weren’t thrilled by our re-direct to Aalborg the next day. We were scheduled to put in at Skagen, a beach-laden town I loved and wanted to explore more. Aalborg had filled an earlier visit with disappointment, its eponymous distillery no longer in town and its summer weather drenching us in cold rain. I gave it a fairly dismissive review on this blog. But great weather, walking deeper into town and  recently-discovered family connections rehabilitated the place for us.

Once again, we started the day in search of proper breakfast. A local pointed us to Penny Lane as the best pastry shop in town and he was spot on. Mountains of exquisite hand-crafted delights, excellent coffee and a comfortable, quirky interior. We could have parked ourselves here with a good book all morning. But we were in search of another of my husband’s ancestors.

Since our last visit to Aalborg many hours in Ancestry.com have revealed scores of leaves on the Bencard family tree, including a past bishop of Aalborg from the turn of the 18th century. I like to think this eight times great grandfather, Frands Thestrup, had something to do with the magnificent and surprising cathedral interior. From the outside, the church … also known as the Budolfi Church … is exactly the streamlined, white, decoration free architecture you’d expect from a serious Lutheran establishment. Inside, however, one wonders if the population of Aalborg simply chose to ignore the reformation. The whole place is encrusted with cheerful polychromed wood carvings that look downright Baroque. The black and white marble baptismal font, worthy of a church in Rome, came in during Thestrup’s time, as I suspect did more of the decorations. Was his official mission to Florence for King Frederick an influence? And what the hell was a Danish bishop doing swanning around with the Medici? How did this church manage to hang on to such apparently Catholic decorations? Such details weren’t available in the church. Another research objective for my husband.

We spent the rest of our available time sitting in the sun on Obels Plads, surrounded by picturesque gabbled buildings and drinking local brews. We’d met a lovely couple from Houston on the cruise and they wanted to try local offerings. One of the few highlights from our drenched last visit was Søgaards Bryghus, a local microbrewery and restaurant that proved even better when drinking alfresco beneath a warm spring sun. 

My only criticism of Aalborg on this visit? The town hot dog stand across from the architectural blockbuster that is the Jens Bangs house wasn’t open. Leaving us without one of our essential Danish culinary highlights this visit. Fortunately, when it comes to these Bencard homelands, we know we’ll always be back.

Fantasy-fuelling Schwerin Castle is a little-known jewel in northeastern Germany

Ask people to think of a fairy tale castle in Germany, and most will immediately think of Neuschwanstein, the extraordinary fantasy-come-to-life of Bavaria’s “mad” King Ludwig. What’s less known is that the mountain-top palace is just one of many romantic dreams in stone across the country. In the 19th century Germany was not one country, but a patchwork of many, and architecture was one of the ways the rulers of sought to outdo each other.

The happy side-effect of having a second, unexpected day in Rostock was that I got to spend time at another one of these ego enhancers: Schweriner Schloss, sometimes dubbed by the Germans “the Neuschwanstein of the North”.

There’s been a fortification on the island at the southeast edge of Lake Schwerin since the early Middle Ages, when the Slavic ancestors of the Dukes of Mecklenburg settled there. Prints show a lovely Renaissance palace there in the early 1600s, but the place went out of fashion and was in bad shape by the time father and son dukes in the early 19th century decided to rebuild it. Romanticism was sweeping the art world, architecture looked backwards to re-create (and improve) historic styles and Biedermeier furniture and fashion was all the rage. 

Schwerin is a wonderful pastiche of all of this, but where Ludwig based Neuschwanstein on his visions of the high gothic, the Dukes of Mecklenburg looked to the Loire Valley. The German castle starts with Blois, mixes in bits of Chambord and Ambois, adds on lashings of additional decorative detail in moulded terra cotta panels, and supersizes it all. It’s surrounded by formal gardens studded with ornate statuary, and its lakeside position on the edge of both Mecklenburg’s capital city and a vast park makes it the focus of scores of picturesque views. Inside, there’s a fortune in gold leaf, overlapping layers of decorative detail and a throne room that makes the one at Buckingham Palace look subtle and understated. A sensitive soul, or a French purist, might condemn the place as an over-the-top assault on the senses. Those who like opulence, however, really need to get Schwerin on their bucket lists.

Schwerin’s current dazzle, however, is really only a generation old. There are reasons you probably haven’t heard of it, and for why everything is quite so glittering today. Like neighbouring Rostock, Schwerin Castle didn’t have a good 20th century. Its dukes abdicated in 1918, it went through two losing world wars, then ended up behind the iron curtain. Maintaining, much less celebrating, the architecture of the wealthy ruling classes was never going to fit the zeitgeist of the GDR. One can only imagine the beating the place took in various communist state incarnations, including a training college for kindergarten teachers. The current tour includes a peek into a few rooms that haven’t been restored yet, their faded, shabby grandeur emphasising just what an extraordinary job local craftspeople have done bringing this sleeping beauty back to life.

Following the re-unification of Germany, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern became a new state and the castle the seat of its government. Renewed civic pride and a desire to reclaim a near-lost past must have inspired the restorers, and the accountants who funded them. In addition to the 19th century palace wing, there's a magnificently modern council chamber inserted into a hall within the old fabric that was beyond resurrection. If you didn’t see those still-to-be-restored rooms it would be hard to believe that this place had ever fallen on hard times. 

Rich woodwork differentiates Schwerin. Dark panelling gleams. Animals and plants twine in carved detail. Parquet and marquetry floors dazzle. It’s no surprise, given that forestry is still one of this area’s key industries and our train passed many cars stacked high with fresh-cut timber on the way from Rostock. But it’s a long way from a felled tree to creating a heraldic fantasy on the floor of your throne room that’s so detailed you’d think someone had painted it, rather than inlaying it with wood.  

Aside from the throne room, layered with marbles, heraldry, gilt, opulent fabrics and detailed plasterwork, my favourites were the three rooms built into the main round tower overlooking the gardens and lake. While each had spectacular views, the decor varied considerably. The lowest level was a highly feminine vision of Napoleonic neo-classicism, in pinks, burgundies, and faux marble, complete with a small copy of  Canova’s shocking nude reclining statue of Napoleon’s sister, Pauline Borghese. One floor up is a bower of love and flora, where the Duchess of the time is painted in circular insets around the room with flowers of each month in her hair, as more flowers cascade down the curtains and across the plaster. On the top floor the tower turns masculine, all dark colours and gothic tracery on the ceiling. 

Outside the castle is surrounded by beautiful formal gardens planted with abundant colour, made all the more photogenic because they’re sandwiched in between the lake and the castle’s fanciful towers. There’s a unique sunken orangery that now serves as a restaurant. Beyond, the town itself is full of gracious architecture and there are vast parks near the castle. Plus boat rides on the lake. (Sadly, we didn’t have time for anything beyond the main building, where admission comes with an excellent audio guide in English that will encourage you to linger.) 

And don’t miss one of the best signs ever that Germans really do have a sense of humour, found on the crossing signals at the intersection outside the castle. The building is supposedly haunted by the ghost of a diminutive cavalier named Petermännchen. Schwerin’s town council has immortalised him in the stop and go lights of the pedestrian crossing. Just another piece of magic in this place that’s well off the usual tourist track, despite its magnificence. If you’re ever in Northeast Germany, make Schwerin a priority and help put it back on the sightseeing map.

Wandering Rostock's Hanseatic glories beats hours on a bus to race through Berlin

It's easy, when confronted with the glossy marketing and the detailed itineraries, to forget that sea- and ocean-going cruises are weather dependent. You'll only be following that seductive itinerary if your ship can safely get in to the promised port. High winds in the Baltic scuppered three of the ten destinations we'd been planning on: Gdansk in Poland and Skagen and Bornholm in Copenhagen. While we were deeply disappointed, particularly in the loss of the medieval treasures of the first, the benefit was an additional and totally unexpected day in Rostock.

We were probably the only people on the ship to be excited by this. 

Rostock isn't the kind of place that turns up on sightseeing wish lists. I suspect many people outside of Germany would struggle to find it on a map. It doesn't even show up on Viking Cruises' official itinerary for our trip, which instead lists that well-known port city of Berlin ... roughly three hours by bus or train from the coast. But if you're putting together an itinerary for a bunch of Americans trying to pack as many big highlights into their trip as possible, then moving them from Rostock's port of Warnemünde is the most efficient way to get from a cruise ship to the German capital. In my opinion, it's not really fair on the cruisers, who spent roughly six hours of a 10 hour day in transit, or on Rostock, which is a lovely town that deserves to be better known. 

Admittedly, we had a vested interest. The Bencards were a prominent family here. There's a street named after one of them, another was mayor around 200 years ago, and one of the mayor's younger grandsons set off to Denmark in the mid-19th century to seek his fortune and found the branch of the family from which my husband descends. Rostock, for us, was a chance to bring family tales and historic documents to life.

Rostock is a beautiful place, its pastel-coloured buildings, fanciful gables, moulded terracotta decorations and towering red brick churches radiating cheerfulness under bright sun and pure blue skies. You don't need family roots here to appreciate the charm of the place. It was at its most powerful in the high Middle Ages and Renaissance, when its status as leading commercial city in the Hanseatic league made it extremely rich. Merchants splashed out on civic and residential architecture to show off their wealth. That legacy still shines through, despite a bad 20th century on the losing side of two world wars and 46 years under communist rule. For a city that existed and thrived because of the win triumphs of capitalism and multi-national trading, the last must have been particularly awful. 

Fortunately, restorers have been hard at work since Unification as money, commerce and capitalism has returned to the city. There is still a slight feeling of otherness compared to "the West" ... more rubbish, more graffiti and more soulless, brutalist apartment blocks on the city's fringes than you see in the former West Germany ... but today's city centre has eviscerated the bad times and feels prosperous. The main market square is lined on three sides with majestic gabled buildings, including an almost-frivolous pink and white town hall distinguished by seven spires on brick arches coming out of its otherwise baroque exterior. There's a fabulous restaurant in the Ratskeller here where you can get local classics. More later on that. One corner of the square is free of buildings (no doubt the effect of that terrible 20th century), opening up a view over part of the old town and the spire of the Petrikirche, one of Rostock's three impressive medieval red-brick churches.

With all that medieval commerce came a cosmopolitan attitude and one of Europe's oldest universities, still one of Germany's best. The university buildings add architectural glamour and variety to the city, particularly the main building behind the "fountain of joy". Its exuberant decoration features a wealth of moulded terracotta geegawgery reminiscent of London's Victoria and Albert museum but even more lavish. There's a beautiful green space between the fountain and the building, another park carved out from the grounds of an old abbey behind, a walk along the medieval town walls, and a collection of other beautiful academic and commercial buildings.

The area inside the old town walls slopes down to a little valley with a stream in it. (The stream's been contained into a watercourse in the centre of a road called Grubenstraße.) While most of the obvious tourist sites are in the 2/3rds of the land to the west of this, if you have time the eastern third offers a very pleasant stroll. This part is almost entirely residential, with tree-lined streets of charming houses and gracious apartment buildings running between Petrikirche and Nicholaikirche. People here put benches in front of their homes, seemingly inviting people to pause and admire the views. The only discordant note is a disturbing number of "stumbling stones", the small memorial plaques the German government awards when properties were proven to have housed people whose lives were destroyed by the holocaust. Rostock was, sadly, more enthusiastic in its Naziism than the average German city. Thus those benches are also a thoughtful, meditative place to think on those stones.

Petrikirche, forming the northern pole of this neighbourhood, is an austere example of a Northern German Lutheran church. It's all clean lines and unadorned whitewash except for some modern stained glass windows and the models of sailing ships hanging from the ceilings to give thanks for successful voyages. For a couple of euro you can take a blessedly convenient elevator up to the base of the spire for fantastic views of Rostock. At the southern pole of the neighbourhood, Nicholaikirche has been converted to apartments. It's fascinating to see their windows cut into the peaked roof. If we'd been ready to pause there, the Likörfabrik cafe looked fantastic. It's in an old liquor factory, just down the hill from the church, next to that little stream and enjoying a fantastic view of the old city walls from an outside patio full of happy and affluent locals enjoying Sunday brunch.

We'd always planned to explore Rostock rather than take the cruise's offered excursion to Berlin. Honestly, I'm confident we had a better day than the hundreds who sat in buses for hours to race past Berlin's key sites. And the benefit of a second day for us was an excursion to Schwerin Castle, another little-known destination that deserves more respect. I'll move on to that in my next story.

It’s hardly a cultural capital, but Mariehamn offers cruisers a certain charm

While almost everyone considers Putin’s invasion of the Ukraine a tragedy, I suspect Finland’s Åland islanders don’t mind the boost it’s given to their tourism industry.

To anyone unfamiliar with the region, Åland is a puzzling place for a cruise ship to stop. An archipelago of, literally, thousands of islands with a population of just over 30,000 between them, it’s a middle-of-nowhere sort of place scattered in the sea between Sweden and Finland. There’s no road access. Ferries take four hours from Stockholm and about seven from the main Finnish departure point. There’s little industry, few towns and not much to see beyond the pretty … though not spectacular … landscape of red granite boulders rising from the waters, clothed with pines and birches. It’s as if a petulant giant scattered his bag of marbles and left nature to cover them over. Despite this world of near-pristine wilderness, disturbed occasionally by hunting and fishing cottages, Åland’s tiny capital has an impressive port facility capable of landing and processing more than its whole population (12,000) ever day. Why? Alcohol.

Thanks to its quirky history … founded by Russians, fought over by Swedes and Finns, now part of the later but linguistically and culturally more of the former … the islands are not part of the EU customs zone. Ferries heading to and from Mariehamn can sell duty-free alcohol. Given the high taxation on booze in Northern European countries, the exemption is enough to spark a whole industry. Evidently many Swedes don’t even bother getting off the boats; they just book a round trip, fill up their cars with bottles and enjoy the seascapes.

Cheap, bulk alcohol is, of course, not much of a lure for international cruise passengers. But the cruise lines had to find places to go on round-Baltic cruises once the Ukrainian war closed Russian ports, and Mariehamn had the facilities.

St. Petersburg, it is not.

In fact, if you were to be dropped magically onto one of the town’s streets with any signage and license plates removed, you might swear you were somewhere in the northern half of the American Midwest. Straight, broad, tree-lined streets are populated by clapperboard houses with steep eaves decorated with gingerbread woodwork. Windows are picked out in brightly-coloured wooden frames. Neat gardens sit behind white picket fences. Almost everything in late 19th century, and looks to have been built within just a few decades. Mariehamn channels the spirit of places like Muskegon, Michigan, that boomed at the height of the Industrial Revolution and became economic backwaters soon after. 

All of this makes it a pleasant place to take a stroll, especially if you’re fond of Victorian architecture. Mariehamn was blessed by a lady named Hilda Hongell, Finland’s first female master builder and the designer of more than 100 buildings in town. Forty four remain, including the one she built for herself and her family, and most are in excellent condition. Little variations of colour scheme, roof line, gable decoration and wooden ornament differentiate the various houses. There are also several buildings by Lars Sonk, Finland’s most famous architect, including one delightful summer house that looks like a mash-up of the cottage from Hansel and Gretel and a Viking long hall. The money that drove the late 19th century building boom wasn’t alcohol, but shipping. Currents around Mariehamn mean its port almost never freezes over, making it a central point in the Baltic supply chain as steam ships stepped up the pace of international trade. Tsar Alexander II established the place (he owned at at the time) and named it after his wife. Local shipping magnates recognised an opportunity and poured money into development. Near the port you can see the tall ship Pommern, an example of the vessels from which they earned their fortunes, now art of a maritime museum.

Even if you don’t have a guide to tell you that the place was master-planned in the 1860s, you’d figure it out. Europe just doesn’t do grid plans this ruthless, with the exception of Roman ruins. The town centre is bisected by one particularly grand, double-width avenue with a promenade down the middle between rows of Linden trees, overlooked on each side by particularly large houses and churches. There are even several consulates, which seems odd for the size of the place but is more logical when you consider the politics of international supply chains. The most striking scene in town right now is the gracious mansion behind a very tall, very secure-looking fence flying a very large Russian flag. The middle of the promenade across the street is full of the Ukrainian colours and peace signs, and has been re-named “Ukrainaplatsen”.

I wish I could say that the business district at the end of this avenue was worthy of the build up. It is, sadly, a disappointment. I’d been hoping for the collection of galleries, boutiques and craft shops, balanced with cute cafes and atmospheric pubs and restaurants, that you often get in resort towns. But this high street was a resolutely local affair, there to provide basics to locals rather than charm to visitors. Worse, the Victorian beauty of the residential streets disappears in the commercial district. It’s dominated instead by blocky, characterless cement blocks from the late 20th century.

A bus tour got us out of the town centre, continuing the theme. Great landscape, a charming vernacular architecture in the housing stock, but properly ugly commercial properties. Luckily there simply isn’t much of the latter. Our drive explored narrow strips of land linked by multiple bridges and populated by groups of summer cottages. Just outside Mariehamn we wound up to the top of a high hill with sweeping views of the archipelago.

We were blessed with a sunny day that, when out of the wind, almost passed for warm. I can certainly see the appeal for someone who wants an outdoorsy holiday in beautiful surroundings. But Americans, certainly, can find similar landscapes in Maine, Michigan, Wisconsin and the like. It was a unique place to see that I can’t imagine ever getting to without the re-route from St. Petersburg. But it’s no match to the cultural capital of Russia. I question why Viking didn’t go direct from Stockholm to the Southern shore of the Baltic, trying Riga, Latvia or Tallinn, Estonia. Or even the old Hansa port of Visby on Sweden’s Gotland. All would have been far more significant on the cultural front. But I suspect none of them have a fully formed booze cruise port. I can’t recommend Mariehamn is you want a cruise that gives you significant destinations at every stop. But if you want bragging rights to visiting a quirky place that almost everyone you know won’t have heard of, Mariehamn is a good place.

Gimme, gimme, gimme … a few more days in Stockholm

Many European capitals have a historic centre that can be covered easily on foot and you can get a good sense of them in city break over a long weekend. Not Stockholm.

The Swedish capital sprawls over 200 inhabited islands and thousands more without people. A carefully-planned itinerary over three days got us to our top three cultural attractions and included a picturesque wander through the old town, but we left with several top picks on our list … notably the Vasa Museum, a harbour tour and Drottningholm Palace … untouched. The first two are where most visitors start. What did we do differently?

We were on a hunt for Vikings, celebration of a local holiday and infectious pop music. With a few adjustments had we known more in advance, we probably could have fit at least one more attraction in. But we enjoyed every moment and, given it was the opening salvo in a two-week holiday, felt no need to rush.

Stockholm is the departure city for our “Viking Homelands” cruise, an adventure around the Baltic, up Denmark and along the west of Norway that’s been high on my Anglo-Danish husband’s holiday dream list for quite a while. So it seemed fitting to start out with his ancestors, those famed longboat raiders of yore.

Swedish History Museum
Here’s where careful research helped enormously. A simple search for “Vikings” and “Stockholm” will point you directly to something called the Viking Museum in Djurgården, an island given over to cultural and entertainment attractions. This “museum”, however, is an entirely commercial enterprise that’s low on actual artefacts, high on admission price (189 krona, just under £15), and heavy on irritated TripAdvisor reviews. Nowhere in the first couple of search return pages will you find the Swedish History Museum, despite the fact that it has the largest single collection of Viking artefacts in the world. This includes a jaw-dropping treasure room with more than 3000 objects (440 pounds of silver and 115 of gold) and a main exhibition hall renovated just two years ago to bring it to the highest interactive standards. If you need proof of why to be wary of Google searches, here it is. Though, admittedly, it should also be a motivator to the museum staff to search optimise their web presence.

I have spent a lot of time exploring Viking culture since acquiring my own Dane, and this is indeed the best collection we’ve seen all in one place. Though the museum at Jelling, Denmark, still edges Stockholm out for the best use of audio-visual interpretation, and perfection would include a proper Viking ship like the ones at Roskilde. But that’s picking holes in what is otherwise an exceptional collection.

Start in the basement, where museum builders blasted a vault into the bedrock to secure jaw-dropping treasures. Real pirates may not have buried their treasure, but Vikings did. A lot. The museum’s “Gold Room”, which lies down a showy painted staircase and through some impressive vault doors, shows off the finds from scores of “hoards” unearthed across the country. There are mountains of coins here, dating all the way back to the Romans and spanning the then-known world; proof of the Vikings’ impressive reach. Heavy chains and bars of precious metal were other ways of carrying cash. But easiest on the eye is a dazzling variety of jewellery, most notably some exceptional gold collars. 

Once you’ve gawped your fill, head upstairs to dive into an exploration of who these people actually were. There’s more treasure in these galleries, but the real focus is on the domestic objects that tell us how they lived, from ornate drinking horns and glasses to humble craftspeople’s tools, swords to ploughshares. Individual sections explore runes, writing and the stories that defined them; craftspeople, their tools and art; the farming and trading life beyond raiding; and the fascinating area of religious beliefs, an often confused mash-up of paganism and Christianity. There’s plenty of interactive fun to be had here, from tying sailor’s knots to writing in runes to exploring a 3-D model of the Viking religious world, from the serpent wrapped around the World Tree all the way up to Valhalla.

There’s enough here to easily keep you busy for a couple of hours, and that’s without wandering upstairs to similarly interactive galleries that explore the rest of Swedish history, everything in English as well as Swedish. The History Museum is a bargain at 150 krona (£11.67) for adults, and despite our attendance on a holiday weekend Sunday it wasn’t hugely crowded. Highly recommended.

Skansen
By sheer coincidence we were in Stockholm on Walpurgis Night, a festival of bonfires that welcomes spring and has long roots back to Christian witch burning and pagan festivals. We were assured by both the internet and locals that the best place to experience Walpurgis would be at Skansen, a 75-acre open air museum that houses a collection of historic architecture from around the country, moved here to form one of the world’s first “folk parks”. So we arrived around 2pm, assuming there would be lots to do to keep us busy until the entertainment programme started at 8:30 pm. The limit of internet research again reared its head, this time not in our favour.

While an enormous bonfire was laid, an intriguing line-up of bands was promised and the web site insisted Skansen was open all day and into the evening on this holiday, none of the historic building interiors were actually open. Wandering in and out as employees in historic dress spin tales was supposed to be part of the appeal of the place. The web site also implied there would be people in folk costumes dancing and generally enlivening the place. In reality, other than the girls at the gate and a few people emptying rubbish bins, we wondered if anyone was working there at all. There’s only so much time you can spend wandering around looking at the outside of historic rural buildings, no matter how charming the parkland they’re set within is. The six and a half hours until Walpurgis kickoff that had seemed necessary now felt like ann eternity. And the plaza where the show would take place was on the highest part of Djurgården, lashed by the winds racing along the watery channel below. (Baltic is synonymous with freezing for a reason.) Waiting around was going to be bone chilling. We couldn’t leave and re-enter, or we might have headed to the nearby ABBA or Vasa museums. Instead we checked out early, leaving space for smart locals who probably weren’t going to turn up for another hour.


Despite that planning misfire, I had a brilliant couple of hours walking around the park. A wide variety of buildings are all laid out in beautiful environments. There are a couple of affluent country estates with formal gardens, several farms of different styles complete with farmyards and animals, summer houses, churches, hunting cabins, festival halls and other civic buildings. There’s even a small town centre with commercial buildings of the 18th and 19th century. It’s all very picturesque, though would clearly be even more attractive in late June once the gardens were in full bloom.

My favourite bit, however, was the zoo. As a childless cultural tourist, I’m not sure I’ve ever been to a zoo on holiday. But since it was built in to a cultural attraction, I had the freedom to wander. Sadly the otters were as absent as the employees, but a quartet of Swedish brown bears had just emerged from hibernation and captivated me for quite a while. The bear enclosure here is beautifully designed with several different areas ringing a hillside, offering the bears everything from a bathing area with waterfalls to woodland climbing spaces to a grass lawn for napping in the sun. All with glass panels for the humans to peer through in appreciation.

A bit further along is a wolverine enclosure that I also found compelling. I knew they could be vicious beasts, but I had no idea they were so cute. An owl enclosure and unusually bold red squirrels completed my joy. (British reds are almost extinct and those that exist at home are notoriously shy.)

Big picture: Skansen is delightful but wouldn’t have made it into our top three without the Walpurgis lure, and that didn’t live up to the hype.

The ABBA Museum
You might not expect it, given how much opera and other “worthy” culture dominates the pages of this blog, but we agreed in advance this needed to be our No. 1 cultural destination in Stockholm and it didn’t disappoint.

British readers are chuckling, while the Americans are no doubt perplexed. “You’ve got to be kidding … why?” reacted one university friend. I admit, I didn’t “get” ABBA when I moved to England, either. They’d only had one No. 1 hit in the States, didn’t tour much there and were consigned by most Americans into a mental bucket with all the other tacky things from the ‘70s that deserved to be left in the dustbin of history. Then I moved to a land that was ABBA obsessed, even before Mamma Mia revived ABBA’s work on stage and screen. Every British celebration that wants to fill the dance floor resorts to their tunes. Not only do most Brits know most of the words, the Swedish quartet seems to unlock British inhibitions faster than free pints at the pub. After 25 years of exposure in my adopted homeland I now see the group as superlative artists who created the best pop songbook in history. Yes, even better than Michael Jackson. If your head is in that place, then it’s no wonder their attraction ranks higher than Viking loot, resurrected boats and harbour tours in a visit to Stockholm.

The museum, tucked in between Skansen and the roller coaster-packed Gröna Lund on Djurgården, is built into a basement of an unimpressive modern building. The delights below belie the humble exterior. The museum combines costumes, memorabilia, news coverage and informative labels to tell the band’s story from their individual musical beginnings. Each was already forging a successful musical career when an impresario put them together and created magic. The story here not only covers their glory days but brings things right up to date with the films, stage shows and further careers of each member.

There’s some fabulous insight into their song writing processes and whole rooms lifted from special places in their lives: their main recording studio, the inside of the cabin where they did most of their writing, the costume shop. The collection of original costumes is a delight, and if you want to have a rest you can watch a whole concert recorded in London in 1979.

The best parts, however, are the interactive experiences. There are karaoke booths next to that recording studio where you can pretend you’re laying down a track. Try sound mixing one of their hits to see the impact the right balances have. Pose for a photo shoot and have your face hilariously grafted onto one of the band members’ bodies. Or, best of all, step up on stage to perform as a fifth member with avatars of the band from their heyday. 

At 250 krona (about £19.50) it was the most expensive bit of sightseeing we did in Stockholm but worth every penny; completely unique and pure fun. With an infectious soundtrack. Do book in advance, however. Tickets sell out and, even if available, walk ups have to wait until there’s room in that magic basement.

Later that afternoon we checked onto our cruise aboard the Viking Jupiter, and the next day took their escorted tour of the old town. With 48 hours in the city now under our belts, the size and transportation logistics around town dissuaded us from packing anything else in.

The old town is a lovely place to ramble. It’s mostly baroque and pastel painted in architecture, hillier than I’d anticipated and characterised by narrow, cobbled lanes. There were fewer shops than I expected so, though we had little free time after our guided tour, I didn’t feel deprived to be ushered back to the bus. Like Skansen, it seemed more about looking at the outside of buildings than interacting with anything.

It was clear by then, however, looking across the water from the palace at the skyline of impressive museums, civic institutions and historic neighbourhoods, that we’d barely scratched the surface. Brits may be able to get to Stockholm easily for a holiday weekend, but you’ll need more than that to get to know