Smart Travels: Stockholm & Sweden

Sweden is a natural-born beauty, winning us over with luxuriant landscapes and sleek Scandinavian style. We cruise through Stockholm’s sun-dappled archipelago, visit a designer hotel and sip cocktails in the trendy Ice Bar (a lounge built completely of ice!). We stroll through the Karl Milles sculpture garden, and admire the world’s best-preserved 17th century warship, the Vasa. Then it’s off to the woodsy “Kingdom of Crystal” where we peek in on Sweden’s best glass artists and get rowdy at a traditional herring dinner. We pay tribute to a grand medieval castle once called the “key to Sweden”. Then we escape to the vacation island of Öland, an out-of-the-way charmer with timeless windmills, ancient ruins and glorious sand beaches. Tips on shopping for glass.