What will you do if you planned nothing for Easter holidays that last for 4.5 days? Imagine the first very warm day this year suddenly comes during this long holiday? One can hang around in the city or ride a bike or go to the cinema and then to a burger/sushi place. You can even clean your whole apartment and cook the meal for the upcoming week. That is what we did during 2.5 days and we still had 2 days left without nothing special planned.
Well, such a long weekend is a great time for travelling! We decided to visit Uppsala, the fourth city in Sweden in terms of population. It took around 40 min to get there by train from Stockholm Central. The cheapest ticket in the 2nd class for one person cost around 85 kr (~ 8.5 euros). When I say 'we' I mean not only myself and my husband but also our two friends (a couple) from Ukraine — Ian and Julia. So there were four of us in this trip.
We didn’t plan a lot of sightseeing, just wanted to visit several most remarkable places. The first one was the Castle. Everyone in Uppsala will definitely recommend it as the most attractive sight of the city. Situated on the hill, the castle can be easily visible from any part of Uppsala.
Hint: click on a photo to fit your screen, thus it's much more comfortable to watch vertical shots.
Built in the 16th century as a fortress, the castle now serves as a site for three museums including Uppsala Art Museum.
And you can enjoy a beautiful panorama of the city.
Built in the 16th century as a fortress, the castle now serves as a site for three museums including Uppsala Art Museum.
From the hill where the castle stands, you can see a cathedral that dates to the late 13th century. Its height is 118.7 meters and it is the tallest church in the Nordic countries.
Here is the courtyard around the cathedral. At that point, we decided to have a little rest in the sun with our best friends — our smartphones.
Because it’s springtime!
In front of the castle, there is a botanical garden of which Carolus Linnaeus took care in 1741. There is also a 200-year-old Orangery but we didn’t go there.
Around 14:00 we felt it was lunch time so we started looking for a place.
It was only March 23rd but you could already sit outdoor of a café! And people seem really enjoy this.
After lunch, we went across the river and I suddenly felt like I’ve seen it before. Look carefully.
Loooooots of bikes, the water in concrete blocks and low houses of brown-reddish color. Doesn’t it feel like Amsterdam?
The river led us to the central park.
You may wonder why the trees are so colorful. That’s an old Swedish tradition to decorate trees and bushes with colorful feathers on Easter. Swedes also decorate small artificial trees inside their apartments. This is how the feathers look like closer.
Oh, a golden cat! I tried to find info about the monument but I didn’t find a picture of it. Maybe it’s a new monument. Seems like it is dedicated to the famous Uppsala’s cat Pelle Svanslös (English: Peter-No-Tail), whose tail was bitten off by a rat. He is a fictional cat created by the Swedish author Gösta Knutsson and a children's book series about him. The books were published between 1939 and 1972 and there are also several films and cartoons about him (1981-2000).
Boat houses of Uppsala have something in common with Amsterdam :)
If one part of Uppsala reminds of Amsterdam, then another one is about Spain. I saw the same yellow straight houses in Valencia, for example. There they serve as cheap hotels for summer tourists.
Now that the sun was hidden behind clouds and it became colder and we got too tired to continue our trip, so we decided to get back home. And the yellow building with the green roof is the central railway station of Uppsala — our destination point. Bye bye!
