A Visit to the Beautiful Swedish Capital

Escaping to the nation’s capital for the weekend, we were greeted by sunny weather and the most gorgeous Autumn colors. It’s nice visiting a city like Stockholm in the Fall season. With so much nature around the city, it’s so picturesque and makes for some beautiful photos.

This was our very first visit to Stockholm which is just a 3 hr train ride away from ‘Goteborg C’ (or Goteborg Central station). The scenery along the way included green pastures with grazing animals and a few lakes.

Stockholm feels like a more proper city compared to Goteborg, not just because of the subway system but there’s more traffic, more people and the various areas in the city are farther apart. It may have just been because it was sunny and a weekend, but it was also pretty lively. Goteborg seems so quiet in comparison.

Snowboarding in the city!
As we were walking around, we heard music and decided to check what was going on. Turns out it was some sort of snowboarding competition in the city centre.

We did a lot of good walking while we were there. It’s an easy city to get around in with all of the walking paths through city parks, pedestrian only streets and paths along the waterfront.

Like other cities in Europe, Stockholm also has many good biking paths. Walking through the shopping areas felt very international. We almost forgot we were in Sweden.

Spotted this busy weekend market

We also walked around Skeppsholmen, one of the islands of Stockholm. There was an old fortress on this island and it offers some beautiful views of the city.

This little guy swam really close and even hissed at a dog that approached.

Ostermalm and along the waterfront, and the Royal Palace…

Other areas we visited were Old Town or Gamla Stan and Sodermalm (where we ate Pho – Pho blog)

One activity I highly recommend is a visit to Vasa Museum. Vasa Museum or Vasa Museet, houses the salvaged and reconstructed vessel, the Vasa, which sank on her maiden voyage just off Stockholm. The ship was amazing!! There’s a free movie you can watch that gives the visitor some background on the ship. We joined a free tour in English afterwards and the tour guide took us around the ship and told us some stories and facts about the Vasa.

Vasa Museum is located on Djurgarden which is an island that has a little amusement park, a few other museums as well as a huge park that we walked around in after our visit to the museum.

We didn’t get to visit Drottningholm which was also recommended to me and there is a Free tour Stockholm free walking tour that is highly reviewed, for the city or old town. The tour we wanted to do was in the middle of the day and we decided to take our time at Vasa museum instead of rushing back for the tour.

There was just too much too see in such a short time. We plan to visit again and of course we have to do another trip when it’s warmer 🙂

Note: Although it may seem like it’s the same price, taking the train is  the better option. Arlanda Airport is a 30 min bus ride from the city centre. We took the train to Stockholm decided to fly back but our flight ended up delayed by 2 hours. Stockholm to Gothenburg is only a 45min flight. We ended up rushing when we could have spent that extra time enjoying the city. Definitely taking the train both ways next time 🙂

Finally found Pho in Sweden (Twice!)

Back home, there is pho aplenty. Whenever we felt like a nice hot bowl of pho we have a plethora of choices. Here in Sweden, if one is are craving asian food, or even pho you are limited to food options the Swedes love (which means hundreds of Thai places, pizza places, sushi bars, Indian food, Kebab plates, ‘American’ restaurants and some Asian fusion restaurants – the majority are ‘Swedish-style’ of course. Indian food that is ‘swedish level of spiciness’ for example. ).

I have since found some pretty decent Chinese restaurants (future blog post) and just recently we have found a decent sized bowl of hot Pho!

Pho in Stockholm
It was pretty funny when we started searching for food during our trip to the Swedish Capital, and the first thing we searched was Pho. Stockholm, a much more proper city, would have to have some and lucky for us, they did.

The restaurant we tried was called Nem Nem Quan located in Sodramalm a few blocks from the tunnelbana station, Medborgarplatsen T-bana

The servers were dressed in traditional Vietnamese clothing, which we read on the online review so we were already skeptical. It was Saturday night and restaurant was full, a good sign, however all of the customers were Swedish. We ordered 1 pho ga and 1 Bun Bo Hue (even though the majority of people were eating noodle dishes). We also ordered some Vietnamese coffee, which was spot-on and reminded us so much of our trip to Vietnam!

Both the Pho and the Bun Bo Hue came in good sized bowls with a slice of lime and some chili, but that’s about it. No fresh herbs or bean sprouts to add to the soup. And although there was sriracha sauce there wasn’t any hoisin!
Note: I know this isn’t just a North American thing because we have been to Vietnam and in the South (Ho Chi Minh) they served the pho with extra bean sprouts, herbs and hoisin.

The Pho broth wasn’t as flavorful as the Bun Bo Hue but I liked the pieces of white meat. The pho noodles were also nice and chewy, not overdone at all. Overall, we were happy to finally find some pho in Sweden! It was delicious and although quite expensive for a bowl of Pho, it was worth it.

Mmmmm….

Pho in Göteborg
Back in Göteborg, a restaurant was recommended to us that served pho. I’m sure there has to be a hundred Thai places in this city, but we had never seen a Vietnamese place. Although many of the ‘Asian’ stores (that sell asian products) are run by Vietnamese people, it was the first I had heard of a Vietnamese restaurant.

Vi Viet, used to serve Thai and Vietnamese but now focus only on Vietnamese dishes as the staff is Vietnamese and that’s what they know how to do best.

They offer various Vietnamese dishes, from Pho to Banh Mi. Unfortunately, they
didn’t have my favorite, Pho ga! Instead, they recommended a different soup
that used chicken broth and had chicken but also included prawns. I think that
was the first time I had pho with prawns before.

We got there near closing and unfortunately they were out of different
appetizers (spring rolls, salad rolls, duck steam bun) we wanted to try and had
run out of Hanoi beer. No Vietnamese coffee on the menu either. That was a bit
disappointing.

The pho, however, was pretty tasty. Unlike the Pho in Stockolm, our Pho Bo and
Pho Ga alternate was served with a side of hoisin, sirracha, bean sprouts and
more herbs. They used a lemon slice instead of lime but some places back home
also serve it with lemon.

The flavor of the Pho Bo broth was actually pretty good, the chicken alternate
with prawns was tasty too but the pieces of chicken seemed to be mixed with egg
and the soup had carrots which made it a little sweet and different from Pho
Ga. Overall, we decided this place was better then the place we tried in Stockholm.

The staff were pretty friendly and told us the restaurant had been around for 8
years but only recently began to serve only Vietnamese food. We told them that
next time we would come earlier in the day so we can try the appetizers.

It sure ain’t North American or Vietnam prices but am glad to have a go to
place for pho finally!

Vi Viet
Gothenburg
http://www.viviet.se/kontakt.html

Nem Nem Quan
Stockholm
http://www.yelp.com/biz/nem-nem-quan-restaurang-stockholm

Ahhh 7 months without pho is waay too long…