Girl With the Dragon Tattoo tour of Stockholm...A Dominican deal with jaunt,ca

STOCKHOLM - The tattoo parlour in the Stockholm neighbourhood where The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo lives is abuzz with the sounds of sharp instruments puncturing flesh, but no one is getting a winged creature imprinted on this day. A young woman is getting a simple flower tattooed on her ankle.

We duck back outside and continue on our way. It's raining, but Daniel Craig and I are both under the same drizzly Stockholm sky in the fall of 2010. He's a few blocks away filming the opening scenes of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo which opens this week in theatres.

The courthouse steps where he was filming is part of the tour I'm on as we walk through the narrow ancient streets where the lead fictional character in Stieg Larsson’s bestselling trilogy Millennium series stomped around in her kick-ass boots.

I missed the English version of the tour by 20 minutes so hook up with the Finnish one and everyone pitches in to translate from Finnish to English for me. We are bound together by Salander. Others hold their tattered paperback copies of The Girl with them, a few, like me, use our iPad as reference.

We play a game as we walk through the streets. We are trying to guess who among the young girls we pass during our walking tour of this working class neighbourhood would have a dragon tattoo. Our conclusion is this Stockholm district is home to many Lisbeth Salanders, many Mikael Blomkvists. Almost anyone we spot could be a crusading journalist like Blomkvist or a computer hacker like Salander.

Until Lisbeth Salander pushed her out, the most famous resident in the working class neighbourhood of  Södermalm was Hollywood movie idol Greta Garbo. A statue of the reclusive actress is still here but few passerbys stop to pose next to the monument.

Stockholm’s largest and most populated district is these days better known as the neighbourhood where the Millennium trilogy is set. Visitors like me are taking pictures of the 7-Eleven where Salander purchased her cigarettes, pickles and microwave pizzas and having coffee at the Kaffebar on Hornsgatan where she spots Blomkvist kissing his girlfriend.

The tour takes us past the Greenpeace office in Södermalm where the magazine Millennium's editorial office is supposed to be located even though in reality, the space is used for  residential apartments.

One of the residents at Fiskargatan 9, one of Stockholm’s most exclusive addresses, looks annoyed when she sees us lingering outside the entrance of the apartment building trying to peer in as she tries to enter. It’s in this building where Salander purchased a luxurious 21-room apartment after stealing millions of dollars through computer transactions.

We hold up our copies of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as explanation of what we’re doing and why we’re in her personal space to invade a little of her privacy. She nods warily before giving us a shrug.

TRAVELALERTS/JAUNT DEAL OF THE DAY

Try an all-inclusive, seven-night stay in the sunny Dominican Republic. The package provides roundtrip airfare, departing from Toronto, and seven nights at Allegro Resort Puerto Plata. From $299, plus $387 in taxes. www.jaunt.ca.