Stockholm, Sweden was our second port on our MSC Musica Baltic cruise, we spent a few hours on a Tuesday in the city. This was our least favorite port as it was much too ‘city like’ for our taste but we managed to hit two major sites during our visit. This is also another expensive city but we were able to keep costs down here as well by using public transport and eating from vendors. The biggest cost here were the attractions we visited but you could choose just to walk around as well. You can read about the cruise experience HERE
Again here you do NOT need to use the shuttle cruise or Hop on Hop off buses, you can but they are much more expensive and much more crowded. We walked about 8 mins down to the bus terminal and and took the public bus into the city. I had already planned what stop to get off at for our first visit, it was about a 20 minute ride and super easy to use! It was $40 round trip for 2 adults & 2 kids to use the bus for 3 bus rides, this was MUCH cheaper than the shuttle or HOHO bus. We used Rick Steve’s Northern Cruise Ports book for the bus info, it also had info for the ATM that is right near the cruise port as well.
Our first stop was the Ice Bar, we’ve always wanted to visit on and the one here is family friendly. It was $70 for 2 adults & 2 kids which included the entrance fee and a drink in an ice glass for each person, they had non-alcoholic drinks as well. It’s also cheaper to book ahead online vs show up and try to go in, and they are sometimes fully booked so I’d recommend making your reservations online.
They give you the warm coats and mitts to wear, but I didn’t think that it was super cold inside, others in the group did. The coats are a one-size-fits-all kinda thing but they do have smaller ones for the kids.
The ice glasses are neat and after your done drinking/nibbling the cup you send them sliding down a ramp into a container. It was neat that the drinks were fun colors as well.
The carvings in the ice were well done and it was interesting to read about the different animals as we walked around the room.
Note the room is small with one table/seating area (made of ice) and you have 45 mins in the room but we only needed around 25 mins.
We also visited the Vasa Museum, it was free for the kids (all kids under 18) but it was still $30.80 for 2 adults. We were a bit pressed for time here so we had to hustle through it. While it was neat seeing this super old and amazing ship I almost think we should’ve done the Nordic museum but again being pressed for time not sure we would’ve seen all of it there.
We didn’t have time to do both the tour (which RS recommends) and the movie so we just went to the movie, it was interesting and had great info about the ship and it’s history. It’s not easy to get a full pic of the ship with a DSLR and the amount of room you have in the building!
It has a amazing story about how it sunk and was on the bottom of the ocean for 333 years before it was found and brought back up to the surface.
There are some very intricate carvings on the ship, I’m sure it took many hours to build that then to have it sink had to be devastating!
There were some food vendors on the road outside the Vasa museum so we grabbed some cheap eats here before walking the 2 mins to the bus stop to head back to the cruise port.
Overall I’m glad that we got to check Stockholm off our bucket list but it’s not necessarily somewhere I’d have to go back again, more a one and done kinda place for us. The Ice bar experience was neat and I’m glad we got the opportunity to do that while we had a chance. This was our most expensive port because we wanted to do the Ice Bar but you could easily just walk around for free if you wanted to be more budget friendly. Total cost here was $170 which included the attractions, bus transport, & food.
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