STOCKHOLM — The Lightning are safely back Stateside, but I stuck around another day. All the better to explore without a practice or game to schedule around.
I thought I’d be blogging about the beautiful round hall at the Stockholm City Library today. My boyfriend, Stephen Mann, who met me here for the latter part of the trip, had other plans.
Libraries and bookstores are must-sees in any city for me. I am a book nerd (reading nearly 200 books a year) and libraries and bookstores often depict the character of a city. Stockholm has a beautiful library with a three-story round hall lined with shelves.
Stephen asked my friend Therése Åström (who I met through a book community within Instagram) to take a photo of us on the balcony from across the hall. After we posed for a few shots, he got down on one knee, presenting me with the best souvenir from our trip. We’ve dated for six years and bought a house, but I didn’t see this timing coming. I got over my shock and said yes!
After a week of hockey and beautiful sights, my best part of the Lightning’s trip to Sweden actually came from Florida.
As for the Stockholms Stadsbibliotek, it isn’t the grandest library — there are many old libraries across Europe and even the States that impress on a larger scale — but it’s unique.
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You climb two flights of stairs to walk around the circumference of the hall, scanning the shelves. There are a lot of familiar English books (the language is taught from a young age in Sweden) in with the Swedish.
Some things are true in any country. There was a young boy running around calling out loudly “Var tysta allihop" (everyone be quiet) while the woman minding him tried to shush him.
If you appreciate libraries and books, this is definitely worth checking out on your next trip to Stockholm.
What I ate
Confession time: I mostly ordered a prinsesstårta because I saw it on one of The Great British Baking Show’s technical challenges. I’m so glad I did.
This traditional princess cake features alternating layers of sponge cake, jam, pastry cream, stiff whipped cream and covered in green marzipan. It might be Stephen’s new favorite cake.
With dinner, we tried moose carpaccio and Löjrom, or bleak roe. The moose didn’t have a completely raw texture so I think it was cured in some form but either way, it was delicious. The roe was just as fishy and salty as I expected and also tasty. We ate it spread on toast points with crème fraiche and chives.
![Diana C. Nearhos - Lightning Reporter](data:image/svg+xml,%3Csvg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" viewBox="0 0 50 50"/%3E "Diana C. Nearhos - Lightning Reporter")