Day 1 and 2: St Louis to Gothenburg

Day 3: Shrimp and Salmon Cruise in Gothenburg

I’m told that people are waiting impatiently to hear more about my trip, so I’m pushing ahead, haha. Teaching has started back this week but Monday and Tuesday are my “easier” days.

Day 4 started waking up in Gothenburg. I remembered to bring my phone down to breakfast.

Pictured: coffee, yogurt with some nuts and seeds, smoked salmon, a swedish pancake with jam, and some grapes. Just looking at this picture is making me hungry! They also had sparkling water on tap, so that’s probably what is in the picture because I am totally addicted.

This is where breakfast took place. You can kind of see how it’s a courtyard and there are skylights up above. I would absolutely recommend this hotel for breakfast alone, but the room was very nice too (and we had the cheapest category.)

After fueling up, we planned to make this a museum day. The first stop was the Gothenburg City Museum to learn about Gothenburg. We were up a little before they opened though, so we wandered around a nearby square, Gustav Adolfs Torg, first.

This is one of the government buildings.

Couldn’t resist a heart selfie, you know Louie is very romantic 😉

Anyway, once it was opening time for the museum we headed in. It was interesting for sure, and started with the earliest history of people in the area up to the present day. We didn’t make it all the way through, but we saw some really interesting artifacts and learned quite a bit.

This was a room showing the remnants of an old Viking Ship, possible the oldest that has been found. We also found it interesting that Gothenburg was a planned city, with a large zigzag city wall, and you can still see this on the map as well as visit parts that remain. It was founded in 1621 which is kind of late for some other cities in the area, so there aren’t as many really old buildings. (Though for us Americans, 1621 is still pretty old, ha!)

We spent about two hours there and then needed pastries and coffee to go further…

We shared a slice of princess cake and a kanelbullar with our coffee at Brogyllen Hamngatan.

We planned to go to the Art Museum next, so we walked that way.

Before going to the museum we had a lunch at Junggren’s Bar and Bistro, which I thought was fine, but a little heavier than I wanted. In any case, it tided us over the rest of the day until dinner so that was good!

We visited the Gothenburg Museum of Art for the rest of the afternoon.

Another view of the aforementioned Poseidon Statue, which was in the square outside of the museum, Götaplatsen.

Then we walked back to the hotel to rest before dinner. I’d had a hard time making a decision where to eat for dinner this night, but finally settled on a place called Familjen, which ended up being a terrific choice.

I ordered the Menu Familjen with the hake, and Louie ordered the Menu Supper with the cream cheese and zucchini. We both loved our meals and tried bites of each others. This was the first of many excellent strawberry based desserts (I guess they were in season!) and we had a wonderful time sitting outside on the patio.

It was still light when we walked back to the hotel, but it was probably after 9.

Signs and stores we found interesting.

We ended the night with a nightcap at the bar right by the hotel called the Bishop’s Arms.

One annoying/funny thing that happened on this day. I was wearing a nice pair of linen blend black pants from Old Navy that I’ve been wearing a lot this summer. I like the fit and the feeling of them. However, I realized before dinner (when I was at the hotel, thankfully) that I had worn holes in the inner thighs from all the walking that day! I was upset and so happy that I noticed before having been embarrassed. I was also luckily wearing black underwear so even so perhaps it wouldn’t have been too awful. This meant I was suddenly down a pair of pants, and unfortunately my lightest feeling pair, which meant that we just did laundry a bit more often and that I did regret not having packed a more capri length pair of pants. Anyway, lesson learned, I suppose, that I can’t trust Old Navy linen type pants with miles of walking in the heat.

Just for the record: on Day 2 we walked over 5 miles, Day 3 just over 10 miles (24466 steps!), and Day 4, the day my pants gave out, over 7 1/2 miles (18223 steps). Day 3 was the second longest walking day of the trip!

Okay, so let me finish up our time in Gothenburg in this post so the next one will be about Stockholm and I’ll save one day of posting. We woke up on Day 5 and of course, had an excellent breakfast. We decided to walk up to Skansen Kronan after checking out of the hotel (which later we wished we had waited to shower and asked for a late checkout, but it all worked out).

This is Skansen Kronan. You can’t go in but you can walk around and it’s up on a hill so there are lovely views. It was part of the original city plan and helped keep the city safe from any potential attackers.

We took selfies in both directions. I love the sky in this picture, don’t you?

We walked downhill and back through the Haga District again, which was fun.

We saw a few sights/sites we hadn’t seen yet, like the Feskekôrka , or Fish Church.

We headed back to the hotel to retrieve our luggage and Louie relaxed in a large red chair.

And then we headed to the train station! We were taking a high speed train to Stockholm, which would take about 3 hours.

We thought NFC Fried Chicken was pretty odd as we are used to KFC.

If you are keeping track, we picked up sandwiches at the station to eat on the train. Our seats were in the quiet car and came with free coffee so we had that as well.

Anyway, that’s where I will leave you for now: leaving Gothenburg and heading to Stockholm! Please comment if you would like to let me know you are reading, and feel free to ask questions!