Stockholm Travel Guide
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No More Birch Beatings At Grand Hotel Stockholm's New Spa
OK so normally we wouldn’t be so excited by the idea of a “Nordic spa”. In our heads, Scandi beauty treatments scream naked saunas, self-flagellation with birch sticks and lots of snow. But we’re making an exception for the Grand Hotel in Stockholm which opened a subtly different “Nordic-inspired spa”, Raison d’Etre, yesterday.
Yes, they have the birch – harvested from local forests, don’t you know – but they do far more exciting stuff than beat you with it. The Be Rested package is a massage ad “hot birch pack” to make you sleep, while the Be Balanced treatment claims to “gently realign” your bones through the power of, um, mung bean pillows.
They’re pretty pricey – 2190 Kronor, or $318, apiece, but last two hours. And the website – which asks you questions like “How do you want to be today? Like a raindrop falling from the sky?” and “If you were a tree, what would you be?” – is really calling to us. And how idyllic does that pool look for a winter soak. Gimmicky, us? Never.
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Stockholm Hotel Awards A Free Suite Stay To Those With Creative Careers
Want a free (and chic) hotel room during your stay in Stockholm, Sweden? If you're a creative—meaning an artist, writer, designer (whether graphic, web, fashion or other) or musician—then the Creators' Inn By Elvine is for you.
A concept from the Swedish fashion brand Elvine, the Creators Inn has taken over a space within the Scandic Malmen Hotel in downtown Stockholm and transformed it into a 3-room suite with interior design and amenities based on answers to two questions:
1. "What are the most important needs of a traveling creator? How do they differ from “regular” guests?"
2. "What would your ultimate room for creators look like? What kind functions, products and services would be provided for the visiting creators?"
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The Clarion Sign: An 'Overblown Diorama of the Scandinavian Sensibility'
Scandinavian devotees might very well froth at the mouth over Stockholm’s Clarion Sign hotel — at least if the NYT is to be believed. Declared Stockholm’s biggest hotel, with “550-odd rooms,” the hotel also won Times-er Frank Bruni’s declaration that it’s “quite possibly” the most Scandinavian (based on Bruni’s travels in Norway, Iceland, Sweden, and “Ikea stores in several continents,” that is) — “a sort of overblown diorama of the Scandinavian sensibility.”
But what does that actually mean? Mod Arne Jacobsen chairs and four kinds of pickled herring at the free breakfast buffet, apparently.
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Stockholm's Grand Hotel Is In a Holiday Mood
While we waited ever so patiently for Nov. 4th to pass, we hardly noticed it was, uh, November. In fact, it’s sorta-kinda almost Thanksgiving, which means the holiday season is about to infiltrate every last cranny of your life (much like Sarah Palin did the last two months, but with fewer Tina Fey impersonations).
In other words: It’s time to shop. And what better way to celebrate our new “socialist” government than with a holiday to Sweden? (We joke!) If you agree--and we think you should--consider the Grand Hôtel Stockholm (AKA the “official Nobel Prize hotel” since 1901).
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The Gray Lady Tells You How to Waste Your Hard-Earned Money
Would you pay $200 or more to stay at a 228-year hotel that once was a brewery, then headquarters for Stockholm's guards (a.k.a., "sausages," earning the building the enviable moniker of "a sausage pot"); next as a jail of sorts, housing thieves and beggars; and later as a temporary hospital during the city's cholera epidemic in 1834, before finally becoming a hotel with no room service and very few individual bathrooms in 1976? The New York Times thinks you should.
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Light Therapy Promotes Healthy Libido and Healthy Organs
The idea of being healed with light may sound about as quackish as an oxygen bar. But what if there was more dark than light during your day and what if you were staying at The Nordic Light Hotel in Stockholm which offers effective ambient light and laser light therapy treatments for overall better health?
The hotel offers 3 different in-room treatments that begin at $125USD. Infrared light therapy uses longwave light technology that creates heat helping smooth skin, reduce cellulite, and increase the body's healing processes.
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WTF Hotel News:: Condi Meets KISS at a Swedish Sheraton
And we're closing our Friday with this strange news report: Condoleeza Rice hooked up with rock band KISS at a Sheraton in Stockholm:
"I was thrilled," a beaming US secretary of state told reporters Friday after meeting lead singer Gene Simmons and his three band members at the waterfront Sheraton Hotel in the Swedish capital on Thursday night.
The Sheraton in question we're guessing is the main Sheraton Stockholm in the city's central business district. While the hotel's rooms look comfy, Stockholm rock city, it is not.
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Stockholm Hotel Scene: Thank You For The Rival Hotel
Once again, our roaming correspondent Monica Guy is summing up a hotel scene for us. This time, she's checking out hotels in Stockholm. Got a question or suggestion about Swedish hotels? Send it our way.
We can't talk about hotels in Stockholm without talking about the hotel everyone's talking about - the Hotel Rival.
The first thing everyone will tell you is that the Hotel Rival's owned by former Abba star Benny Andersson. He's not the only celebrity to own a hotel - Clint Eastwood owns the Mission Ranch in California, Bono owns the Clarence in Dublin and Cliff Richard has the Arora in Manchester, complete with, er, Cliff-themed rooms. But by all accounts Benny seems to be doing the best job of it.
Anyone who's anyone has stayed at the Rival....we're the exception that proves the rule, although we did peer in through the window.
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Stockholm Hotel Scene: Clarion versus Clarion Sign
Once again, our roaming correspondent Monica Guy is summing up a hotel scene for us. This time, she's checking out hotels in Stockholm. Got a question or suggestion about Swedish hotels? Send it our way.
Family strife in Stockholm, where the Clarion Hotel Stockholm (pictured above) competes in arty pretentions with the brand new just-opened (last week) Clarion Hotel Sign.
The two Clarions look fairly similar on the outside, and they both cost a packet. But whatever you do, you mustn't ever confuse the two. Here's why:
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Stockholm Hotel Scene: Chillin', Literally, at the Nordic Sea Hotel
Once again, our roaming correspondent Monica Guy is summing up a hotel scene for us. This time, she's checking out hotels in Stockholm. Got a question or suggestion about Swedish hotels? Send it our way.
Spending the night on a mattress of ice in the designer igloo hotel IceHotel, 200km north of the Arctic Circle in Sweden, may well be something to boast about. But we HotelChatterers like our creature comforts and the simple pleasures in life.
So we're sticking to Sweden's slightly warmer southern capital of Stockholm and to its Nordic Sea Hotel, whose proudest selling point is its Absolut Ice Bar.
Absolut bloody freezing, we guess. But as you know, in Sweden, hotels aren't about cosy mattresses and comfort but about style, design and the being seen. To get in with the A-crowd in this city, it's no pain, no gain.
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Stockholm Hotel Scene: Noble Prizes Galore at the Grand Hotel
Once again, our roaming correspondent Monica Guy is summing up a hotel scene for us. This time, she's checking out hotels in Stockholm. Got a question or suggestion about Swedish hotels? Send it our way.
There are two things that make the Grand Hotel Stockholm special.
Firstly, it's the hotel in which all the Nobel prize-winners stay before being ferried over to the City Hall for the grand prize-giving ceremony everyone would love to be at.
Secondly, it's the only hotel we've seen that manages successfully to combine old-style traditional furniture and antiques with brand spanking new modern design from some of Sweden's most spanking modern designers.
That means....
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Stockholm Hotel Scene: Top Tips For Booking Hotels
Once again, our roaming correspondent Monica Guy is summing up a hotel scene for us. This time, she's checking out hotels in Stockholm. Got a question or suggestion about Swedish hotels? Send it our way.
The key to understanding the Stockholm hotel scene is that nobody goes to a Swedish hotel in order to sleep.
That's not because Swedish hotels are noisy, dirty or uncomfortable - the complete opposite - they're superb. But staying in Sweden's capital is a fundamentally different hotel experience from staying anywhere else in the world. It's because staying in Stockholm is all about style, health and design.
This week we'll be breaking down the Stockholm hotel scene for you starting with our four Top Tips before you book your room.
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