Things to See in Stockholm

No true Scandinavian experience is complete without an understanding of its historical seafaring livelihood. Vasamuseet allows you to simultaneously look into the lives of 17th-century sailors and to appreciate a great achievement in marine archaeology. You'll need several hours to appreciate this amazing place.

No serious traveller should miss the splendour of the Royal Park and its museums. The main attractions are Skansen and the extraordinary Vasa Museum (one of the world's top tourist destinations), but there are many other interesting places to visit in the vast park. Bikes can be rented by the bridge.

While a museum dedicated to almost four centuries of Swedish postal history sounds positively mind-numbing, Stockholm's Post Museum is surprisingly engrossing, crammed with old mail carriages, a climb-aboard train carriage, offbeat postcards and a cute children's post office downstairs for budding postal workers. Previous temporary exhibitions have covered everything from the life of the Great Garbo to the kiss in art.

And, of course, you can mail letters, send packages and buy stamps here.

Quite frankly, the Royal Armoury Museum is brilliant. A regal storage attic of sorts, its engrossing collection of booty spans over 500 years of royal childhoods, coronations, weddings and murders. Sneak a peek at lavish royal wardrobes, King Gustav III's masquerade costume (worn when shot in 1792) and the preserved stomach contents of Baron Bielke, one the conspirators to the king's assassination.

Sweden's largest art museum heaves with painting, sculpture, drawings, decorative arts and graphics from the Middle-Ages through to the present. While there's no lack of continental bigwigs here, from Cézanne to Watteau, come for the Scandi stuff, which includes works by CG Pilo, Anders Zorn and Carl Larsson, whose commissioned staircase fresco, Midwinter Sacrifice, was originally rejected by the museum. Style buffs shouldn't miss the Design 19002000 exhibition.

This down-to-earth drinking hole boasts 400 whiskeys, a huge selection of Belgian ales and a good range of Swedish-made microbrews, notably the semi-divine Jämtlands Bryggeri trio Heaven, Hell and Fallen Angel. It has mussels on the menu and free live R&B and rock on Sunday nights.

This Cuban restaurant turns into a crowded salsa bar at night, with limber-legged Swedes and latinos intermingling over mojitos and cuba libres in the basement. Nothing will get you through a long winters night better than a fat Cohiba, a large ron and some Cuban rhythms.

Fasching turns Swedish sobriety on its head with kick-ass jazz, swing and tango jams from local and international cool cats. Late Friday nights, it all makes way for DJ-spun reggae at club night Club Studio One (100; from midnight to 04:00), while Saturday club night Soul (100; from midnight to 04:00) is a funkalicious mix of retro R&B, soul jazz, disco and funk.

High ceilings, wood-panelling and no-nonsense waiters in waistcoats set the scene for classic husmanskost (traditional Swedish fare) at this century-old beer hall. The superb menu includes an assortment of herring and cheeses and superbly roasted spare-ribs served with red cabbage and apple puree. Add huge beer glasses and you're set for an epic toast to Sverige.

The menu at this kvarterskrog (neighbourhood bar) features Swedish and continental choices, including vegetarian. The Swedish country sausage called isterband, served over potatoes in a cream sauce, is a favourite dish here. Prices are lower in the 'Propeller bakfickan', so called because John Ericsson, after whom the street is named, invented the propeller.

Set in the opera house and appropriately crammed with opera photographs and deco-style lampshades, this buzzing counter restaurant is famed for its savvy old-school waiters and top-notch husmanskost; Bakfickan shares a kitchen with super-swank Operakällaren. A great place for solo supping, it's best late at night, when you're bound to stumble across a bitching soprano.