Lavonardo

Stockholm and sunny weather was a combination that invited a day on the seas and in the archipelago. On account of not having a full day, we settled on a shorter trip as opposed to a 12 hour two-meal cruise.

Fjäderholmarna (feather islands, of which only one was easily available) are reached with a half an hour journey on a boat. The ride crosses the harbour and provides a great view into the Stockholm waterfront.

The island was billed as a center of craftsmen, with plenty of workshops to visit and browse. In reality the number of shops was small, but at least some of them did contain plenty of interesting objects. Picked up a hollow glass fish – just the thing to hang on the balcony.

Ate a scrumptious meal at the Rökeriet. The restaurant smokes their own seafood, and both the fish and the shrimp were nothing short of excellent. My background as a landlubber surfaced again, there’s a trick on peeling shrimp that persistently eludes me.

Äventyrsgolf (apparently a mini golf course) was shut down for the year, and all the holes carefully excised from the ground. The only real “activity” offered in 2010 was lounging around the cliffs. Nothing wrong with that, obviously, and plenty of people were enjoying the sun.

The Mackmyra facility on the island was quite a disappointment. On account of alcohol monopoly ther were unable to sell bottles of their product, that much I expected. But the unavailability of swedish whiskey by glass struck me as an odd omission. But even odder things were on the cards: the shopkeeper refused to sell t-shirts to anybody who does not own a share of a Mackmyra barrel. Their loss.

Forgot to check whether there were any caches on the island – the environment would have allowed plenty of good hides.

The crowds were plentiful enough in the departure pier, but fortunately the vast majority of them were taking another boat – to Slussen as opposed to our destination.

A long day had built up quite a hunger, and sadly Akihabara is not exactly packed with quality restaurants. At least ones that project their appeal on the streets.

Finally settled on a chinese restaurant on the top floor of Yodobashi Camera (a tactic that served us well in Osaka), and didn’t come off disappointed at all.

Quite the opposite, the spicy octopus dish (accompanied by an appropriately chilled glass of Ki-Rin) was a gloriously good cap on a day that easily surpassed 20k steps.

For dinner rode the subway to Namba – allegedly the entertainment-oriented area of the city.

Even on a rather chilly monday evening the first drunken salarimen got spotted only a few meters into the zone. Thankfully the black-clad guys kept to themselves.

Had a very crab-based dinner at JRI (the name of the chain remains a mystery): crab legs, crab sushi and crab bateria (carved rice topped with crab and kelp). The legs required some chopstick acrobatics, but all in all were pretty easy to eat. And delicious, utterly delicious. The entire menu was heavily crab-based – the oddest dish was a plate of unpleasantly darkish grey “crab guts sushi”. Concentrated on the white, pink and red bits instead.

The restaurant had just a couple of booths – after a long day walking it was quite a thrill to strip off the shoes and sit next to an almost floor-level table. A pint of well-chilled Asahi lager filled out the dinner nicely.