Baltic Cruise, Part 4: Stockholm Cruise Stop = Sunlit Passages, Sunken Ships & an ABBA Encore

A Four-Hour Sail Through the Archipelago to Arrive in Stockholm

Cam was up at 5 a.m., curious just how light “light” really gets this far north. The answer: very. Sunrise in Stockholm comes at 3:41 a.m. in early June, so by the time he reached the open deck, sunglasses were not optional. He claimed a table at the stern and watched the ship begin its four-hour threading of the archipelago — water so calm it barely registered as moving, islands close enough to read the names on the mailboxes along the shore. Unable to keep it to himself, he went below and roused Meg, groggy but soon won over. 

Anyone who has sailed BC’s Inside Passage or the Thousand Islands of the St. Lawrence will recognize the feeling. We sat at the stern for nearly three hours watching gulls trail the ship and tiny red-and-white cottages slide past, three ferries following in our wake the whole way — this narrow, rock-strewn channel carries a lot of local traffic for something only wide enough for one ship at a time. Cam, a former Navy man, found it all the more enjoyable for not being the one responsible for getting us through it. 

The Remarkable Story of the Vasa

Docked at last, we headed straight for the Vasa Museum. The Vasa was a Swedish warship that sank on its maiden voyage in 1628, less than a kilometre from the harbour, undone by being far too tall for its width — a stiff gust tipped her enough for water to pour through her open gun ports, and that was that. Of more than 400 people aboard, 37 died. There was an inquiry, as there always is after a disaster, and just as predictably, no one was ever held accountable. Some things don’t change.

The Vasa sat on the harbour floor for 333 years before being raised in the early 1960s, and the cold, low-oxygen Baltic water did something remarkable in the meantime: no shipworms and almost no decay. The museum calls her 98 percent original, carved ornamentation and all, missing only a few noses. We’d been told to budget two hours. We left after four, and didn’t feel rushed.

If you go, we recommend a Combo Ticket with Vrak Museum, highlighted below. The cost is 359 Kroner (as of June 2026) for both museums saving you 66 Kroner. You do NOT need to buy them in advance, pre-purchased tickets do not give priority access.

For us, there was only one option for lunch

Lunch required Swedish meatballs, obviously. It was our chance to settle, once and for all, whether a certain Swedish furniture retailer’s version holds up. We found a local spot outside the tourist core called Mom’s Kitchen and ordered the köttbullar with gravy, lingonberry, and mashed potatoes. Verdict: noticeably better than IKEA, though IKEA isn’t as far off as you’d hope, and Mom charges accordingly more for the privilege.

Restored, we wandered through Stockholm’s upscale shopping streets, past the Royal Palace and the Nobel Prize Museum, and into the cobblestoned heart of Gamla Stan. Whether the city actually has a clean, streamlined character, or whether we simply arrived expecting one, is hard to say with certainty. Either way, there was plenty more to see, which was just as well — this was an overnight stop, with a whole second day still ahead. That evening’s onboard entertainment was a tribute to ABBA, which felt like the only correct choice in a Swedish port.

Underground Art

Day two started at a gentler pace, since an overnight stop means no rush to be back aboard before sailing. We were ashore just after eight, and endured a slow bus into town. We made our first stop a detour underground. Kungsträdgården subway station, reputedly Stockholm’s most-photographed subway station, carved to look like raw rock with bursts of artwork. There are Roman-ruin-like sculpture and intricate metalwork built right into the stone. We suspected it earned that title more because it’s the busiest station in central Stockholm than because it’s the city’s most beautiful, but it was worth the stop regardless. 

Maritime History

From there, on to Vrak – Museum of Wrecks, the Vasa’s sister museum and the reigning Museum of the Year. It opens with a film projected 270 degrees around the room and across the ceiling, then moves into a gallery where artifacts from a 17th-century wreck have been left exactly where divers found them — the carpet itself is a photograph of the seafloor, with holograms of each object hovering in its true position. Upstairs covers early Viking history and the long-running naval rivalry between Sweden and Poland.

One exhibit landed harder than the rest. The museum plays the actual final radio transmissions from the M/V Estonia, a ferry that capsized in a 1992 storm with the loss of more than 860 of the over 1,000 people aboard. For Cam, who spent years standing bridge watches in the Navy, the strain in the master’s voice over VHF — reporting lost power and no position to give – was obvious. Listening to the radio chatter of nearby ships as they raced toward rocket flares, trying to save people they couldn’t reach in time, was hard to listen to and harder to forget.

The museum’s final section turns visitors into maritime archaeologists: a Virtual Reality (VR) dive to recover artifacts, a lesson in dating wood, a clay pipe, and a bone fragment, then a dig through the archives to piece together how a given ship actually met its end. The kid in both of us loved it.

The Ferry Ride Worth Missing the Bus For (or An Improvised Harbour Tour)

We’d hoped to finish with a harbour boat tour but ran short on time, so we improvised. The local transit option turned out to be the best sightseeing cruise of the day and a better plan entirely. A relaxed, hour-long cruise through the archipelago that dropped us within 300 metres of the gangway. A double bonus, it was a fraction of the harbour cruise fare and a fraction of the walking. 

Sailing out of Stockholm – As Delightful as Sailing in

As we sailed out that evening, the ship retraced the channel in reverse, under another cloudless sky — islands, small boats, cottages, all of it as striking leaving as arriving. It’s hard not to wonder how different this same passage looks in the dark heart of a Swedish winter.

Up Next – Copenhagen

Back aboard, Cam squeezed in a 30-minute stretch-and-release yoga class before dinner. That evening’s entertainment featured a sand artist, drawing onto a lit table with a camera projecting her work overhead, etch-a-sketch style. Impressive technique, interesting craft — just not entirely our thing.

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Travel quote “A journey is best measured in friends, rather than miles.” — Tim Cahill

Cam and Meg