Stockholm in Winter – Arrival at Arlanda via Finnair and settling down

14 January 2017

We flew to Stockholm via Helsinki using Finnair. We departed from Singapore Changi airport on AY082 at 23:35 hour.  This was my first time on a Finnair flight and I was pleasantly surprised by the nice clean and spacious Airbus A350 plane, reasonable good food and large touch-screen entertainment system.  A useful feature in the entertainment system is a time-table showing the timings of departure, arrival and meal services during the flight. There was also ample leg room for me, who at 1.74m is reasonably tall.

Simulated Northern Light or Aurora light-up on Finnair flight to Helsinki.

There was even a simulated Northern Light or Aurora light-up prior to landing.

Breakfast served on Finnair flight to Helsinki.

Finnair’s (Finland’s Airline) hub is at Helsinki airport. We landed in Helsinki airport at about 6 AM, as scheduled.

After going through passport control, we waited about 30 minutes to board our flight to Stockholm. Helsinki Airport is cool. There were even game machines at the transit waiting area and piped in sounds of singing birds in the toilet!

Game machines at the transit waiting area of Helsinki airport.

The plane to Stockholm was a small one and it was parked on the tarmac. No aero bridge connecting the terminal to the plane. We had to take a shuttle bus from the terminal to board the plane from the tarmac.

We got to experience Finland’s sub-zero winter weather for the first time as we walked on the icy tarmac from the bus to the plane. Although we were not too warmly dressed, the transfer was pretty quick and no one froze to death.  It was actually quite fun for me since walking in sub-zero temperature on a dark and icy tarmac was not something I get to do before.

Full moon over the frozen runway at Arlanda Airport.

It was dawn by the time we arrived at Stockholm’s Arlanda Airport. We took off from Helsinki Airport at 8 AM and arrived in Stockholm at 8 AM! There was an one hour time difference between Finland and Sweden and the flight took one hour.

We bought our Comviq mobile prepaid data-only SIM card from a convenience store inside the airport and went to the Tourist Information Center to collect some maps and brochures of attractions in Stockholm. The SIM cards was easy to install and we had Wi-Fi service within minutes.

As this was a scheduled Arrival Day for International Students on the Exchange program, there were international student guides at Arlanda airport (Terminal 5) to help arriving international students.

Arriving students were able to travel for free from Terminal 5 in Arlanda Airport to Stockholm’s city center using their chartered buses which departs every hour during the Arrival day. There were vacancies on the bus and they offered to give a free ride to accompanying family members as well. Great welcome service!

We have time to grab some food and drinks from a 7-11 store before our bus departs. The bus ride to the Cityterminalen Bus Station took about 30 to 45 minutes.


First glimpse of Stockholm’s frozen lakes and landscape from our bus as we approached Stockholm city.

At the Cityterminalen Bus Station, we went to a Pressbyrån convenience store to buy our SL access card (20 SEK for the card) and load a 7-day Travelcard onto it for 315 SEK.  With a Travelcard, we could travel as much as we liked throughout the Stockholm county for the duration of the card.


Note: Useful tips on how get around with public transport, SL, throughout the Stockholm County can be found here.


Cityterminalen serves as a hub for the bus transportation system in Sweden and is connected by a tunnel to the Stockholm Central Station. From there, we walked to the T-Centralen (central station for Stockholm’s subway called the Tunnelbana) and took the subway train to Alvik Station where the students’ accommodation is located.

The apartment is located within walking distance from the Alvik tunnelbana (T-bana) station but it was not easy to walk on the icy side-walks. The normal flat sidewalks are quite OK. Going up and down the icy slopes that was completely iced up was the most difficult. One of us slipped and fell and injured his hand slightly along the way.



We got the keys from the apartment host, Patrick, and we went through the check-in process smoothly. The rest of the day was spent helping the boys settle into their new home and making a list of items that we need to buy. For some of the items, Patrick was helpful to provide upon our request.

Samuel’s room for the next six months.

Once the boys were settled in, we took the tunnelbana to the Medborgarplatsen Station where our own Airbnb apartment was located. There we met up with the rest of the group who travelled by different flights.

For dinner, we went to the Meatball for the People restaurant in the Södermalm area but the restaurant was fully booked. We made a reservation for the next night and went to pub along Folkungagatan instead.

The pub was well patronised by the weekend crowd and we were shown to a table located in the basement. This pub shows live sports and we were able to watch a live EPL match while having our dinner. While the staff was friendly, the food was not very good. By then, we were too tired to bother anyway.