2 Best Sights in Side Trips from Stockholm, Sweden

It takes a five-minute ferry crossing to reach tiny, secluded Fårö from Gotland, to the south. A popular summer retreat for Scandinavians, the island has just 600 year-round residents. Legendary Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman once called this island home; every June, film fanatics head over to celebrate Bergman Week. And in September, the island celebrates Fårönatta—a night when its shops, restaurants, and attractions stay open all night and the church holds a midnight mass. Head to the Digerhuvud area to find some impressive natural "sea stacks," weather rock formations that are known as raukar. They often take on human profiles, fueling local myths and legends. Note that basic services, including police, medical services, and banks, are virtually nonexistent on Fårö itself. If you really want to retreat from the world, Fårö is it.

Visby's cathedral, also known as S:t Maria Kyrka (the Church of St. Mary), is the only one of the town's 13 medieval churches that is still intact and in use. Built between 1190 and 1225 as a place of worship for the town's German parishioners, the church has few of its original fittings because of the extensive and sometimes clumsy restoration work done over the years. That said, the sandstone font and the unusually ugly angels decorating the pulpit are both original features worth a look.