All posts tagged: island

Restaurant Love: Svartsö Krog, Sweden

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An hour and a half out of the city by ferry, Svartsö is an island gem in the Stockholm archipelago that is almost worth visiting just for its lovely (and only) restaurant – Svartsö Krog. This dining experience can be filed under Travel’s Welcome Little Surprises. We arrived in Svartsö (as per my previous post on this island adventure) with zero expectations of a delicious meal – rather just a dim hope of any meal – and floated into what was surely some kind of heaven portal. Gourmet (but not wanky) local fresh Swedish food, delivered with friendly service. We couldn’t believe it when our waitress confessed – in the infuriatingly perfect English adopted by all Scandinavians – it was her first week. Even without a booking, we were seated on the wooden balcony, with views out to the water. The eve was starting to get cooler, but there were big rustic blankets at hand should we need them. On learning that food was served until 10pm and the restaurant was open until midnight, we …

Svartsö: Wild Spin in the Stockholm Archipelago

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This mini adventure began in typical wild spin fashion, running at high speed through the crowds of Gamla Stan, Stockholm’s old town. We didn’t leave enough time after visiting the Vasamuseet to ferry back from Djurgården, collect our bags from the hotel and get down to the ferry wharf and set sail on our next adventure. So here we were, victims again of our misconception that we can fit a fat itinerary into a thin afternoon, sweating and side-stepping the leisurely tourists of Central Stockholm. But this is a story about the archipelago. We walked onto the gangplank with a minute to spare. The Stockholm Archipelago is made up of approximately 30,000 islands, so as the ferry left the city in its whitewash, we began to float past rocky islands of varying sizes. Some are little more than a jagged outcrop used as a resting place for gulls, others are the size of a private property – and indeed that’s what they are – a pine-clad oasis for a summer home, Swedish flag swinging in the …