GUWonder

Gamlastan is more desolate at night than the T-Centralen area. And some of the more notoriously violent incidents around the center of the town when using public transit involve just that part of town where you've decided to stay.

Hotels around Strandvagen or Ostermalm or T-Centralen would have more passerby traffic than Gamla Stan hotels. And there is safety in numbers. Said and agreed to by Stockholm-residing female relatives in the Swedish security services.

If the goal is to see fewer homeless people and beggars, then Gamla Stan at night is the place for that goal to be met. But even homeless people and beggars tend to stay where they feel safer and are less likely to get disturbed by others.

manda99

Gah! Now I'm second-guessing everything and re-googling all the neighborhoods!

GUWonder

Which budget range are you looking at paying per night? Then you could be given some specific suggestions that would help you to avoid staying near T-Centralen and yet would still involve staying in an area with a rather good amount of pedestrian and other traffic even in the post-dinner hours.

Busy roads make for safer streets around here when it comes to concerns about the ordinary type of violent street criminals. Pickpockets are an issue at T-Centralen and at Gamla Stan, but the latter area isn't as busy at night as T-Centralen. This is sort of like the proverbial picking your own poison, except that the poison is not so effectively concentrated regardless of which is picked -- after all, it's downtown Stockholm, not the Loop or Gold Coast.

pseudoswede

I'm totally fine with the immediate area near T-Centralen. Sergel Torgs Plaza, on the other hand....

GUWonder

Sergels Torg -- particularly the below-street level "pit" area -- is the pits; and it has been such a "special" place for decades due to the drug-user and petty fencing scene there. But even that seems rather "contained" to the "pit", more so the covered areas of the "pit". It's a place I still try to avoid using, especially at the more odd hours of the day/night. Given the long-standing reputation of Sergels Torg, it's rather surprising that the Scandic Sergels Torg hotel didn't rebrand itself. Maybe it will happen after it re-opens.

manda99

I don't have a hard budget, but I guess under $250ish? Like I said, it's just me and my 12 year old son. We won't be doing any night life kinda things. We'll be traveling around the local area and hitting all the tourist sites during the day. I'd like to stay very near a t-bana stop. My son likes to add to his list of different public transportations that he's taken around the world. I want to be able to walk out my door and easily find cafes, pubs, etc. We won't need any fancy restaurants or bars. I prefer a quiet area so I can sleep without party noise outside my window (but I'm mostly okay with traffic noise - I have that at home). I like it to feel like an older European neighborhood and hotel. I don't want to stay in a typical Hyatt room, etc. My son just likes to wander around and look at buildings that don't look like home and walk through tiny European streets and buy local sweets.

I swear we're actually very laid back tourists, ha.

stut

I assume you mean selling presumably stolen goods?

I had a wonderful image of the clash of steel being heard emanating menacingly from just below the surface...

manda99

Actually, I just found Hotel Rival and am feeling pretty in love with it, at the moment. So don't tell me anything bad about it, because I don't have any more time or effort left to put into changing the hotel reservation again.

GUWonder

Hotel Rival, at Mariatorget, works; but my preference is to be more central.

AirBNB for apartments near the technical university and ostermalm stops is more my thing.

Foil, saber and epee isn't part of the Sergelstorg scene in my experience, although I once carried the glove there that I had used to fence foil in my more youthful days and was in my storage unit in Stockholm.

Indeed my prior post's reference to the dealing in stolen goods.

FFlash

Even Helsinki central station is equally embarrasing as Stockholm centralen. Lots of *****ss teenagers and alike hoovering around and making you feel uncomfortable. However, it is perfectly safe, I mean nobody will fysically hurt you, but you might get pick-pocketed if you make yourself dumb weak easy target (ex. being drunk).
Mostly it is just a nuisance. But that nuisance makes one feel to stay away.

GUWonder

FWIW or not, I find Helsinki central station and Oslo central station and the areas around those two stations to be worse than Stockholm central station+surrounding area.

Rail stations and the surrounding area in rather big cities are often not that great places to be. And it's been this way for at least as long as there has been an FT. But Stockholm Central is better than the central stations and surrounding areas in Oslo, Copenhagen and Helsinki.

pseudoswede

Consider the Scandic Continental, which reopens on April 1. It's right across the street from T-Centralen.

gnaget

You can enter T-Centralen from Sergels Torg plaza, as you call it. It is called "Plattan" locally. So your comment does not make sense.

There are small, inexpensive hotels in Östermalm, which is an upscale residential area. I stayed at Hotel Karlaplan once, which is next to the namesake subway stop. And you can walk downtown from there.

Of course staying on Blasieholmen is very nice and perfect location. Grand Hotel is there but obviously expensive and also Lydmar.

GUWonder

While the T-Centralen subway platforms are indeed accessible from the Sergelstorg pit (aka "Plattan"), it requires having an SL ticket to get from Sergels Torg to T-Centralen itself or doing a detour through parts that aren't T-Centralen. Sergels Torg and T-Centralen are not one and the same, and they never have been.

Part of the confusion is rooted in T-Centralen having also been known as Centralen. There is a long history behind that and people get confused when they don't know that history, as most people (even long time Stockholm residents) still don't. But the reference makes sense, at least in context. T-Centralen is not Sergels Torg, and certainly "Plattan" is distinct from T-Centralen.

ryanbryan

Ehm no, you can access T-Centralen from Sergels torg, it's Centralstationen (for pendeltåg, SJ and Arlanda Express) and Cityterminalen (for buses) that you can't access. As you point out, you need an SL ticket to cut through T-Centralen to get there.

In any case, Stockholm city isn't that bad that you need to be that worried about any of this. There are dodgy areas, but they aren't really any worse than any other major city, and not enough to change your hotel for. Just be observant of your surroundings and you'll be fine.