Present Day:

First of all, jet lag is real. This is day 4 of waking up before 6 am and feeling ready to go but as all days before, that hits me later. I have hopes that my brain is less foggy today, however!

I got started with telling you about our trip in a previous post and let’s move onto the next day now. Just so you know, I am (at this time) doing one day at a time so I can share with you all the amazing pictures I took!

Trip Report:

We woke up early in Gothenburg (or Göteborg) and headed down to the hotel breakfast. You guys. This breakfast was amazing. It was in a sort of indoor courtyard with plants, a 3 story high skylight ceiling, and so many stations of things to eat. A yogurt station with all imaginable add ins and several kinds of yogurt. A hot station with pancakes, eggs, various meats, oatmeal, hard and soft boiled eggs. A table with various salmon, herring, pates, cold sliced meats, cheeses…and so many breads and crackers to choose from, or toast if desired. And coffee with several kinds of juice. Oh, and croissants and other (small) pastries. We ate much more than we normally would for breakfast and tried quite a variety of things. Do I have any pictures? Evidently not from this day.

After that, we didn’t have any specific plans for the day until evening, so the plan was to get the lay of the city on foot, fight jet lag, and enjoy ourselves and enjoy being in a new country.

The streets are quite walkable, and in Sweden (and Finland) cars yield to pedestrians. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep an eye out, but it means that if you need to cross, they will stop and let you know, and and that pedestrians have much more space in public areas. Throughout the day we were surprised by how FEW cars there were in Gothenburg and instead people were walking, biking, riding scooters, and taking trams and buses.

We never did try any taquitos, but 7-11’s were ubiquitous throughout Sweden.

We walked through some parks, up to the Art Museum, and all over, it seemed. Louie was navigating, which I like to make/allow him to do, since I am the one who plans the trips, it lets him take over and I can relax more that way.

I thought this row of buildings looked really cool.

I tried to get into Gothenburg University, but I didn’t get in.

The famous Poseidon Statue by Carl Milles. Apparently initially the status had a very large you know what, but the city objected so now it has a weirdly small one. The sun was a little tough to deal with so it’s not super well pictured here, I’m sorry to say.

Very cool doors. On an unrelated note, these are supposedly ankle pants, but seeing in these pictures, they are definitely shorter than that (tall girl problems). I think they are better when I wear them with flats rather than sneakers. Oh well.

We needed to get sunscreen (didn’t want to bring a big bottle, plus nivea had some nice sunscreens in Norway and we were hoping to get some more in Sweden) so we went to a grocery store. I highly recommend going to grocery stores in foreign countries anyway, because it can be so fun to look at the food and see what sort of things they have (and buy chocolate).

The Swedes don’t seem to be afraid of bread and crackers.

Many things that come in tubes! Mayonnaise type things.

The Garden Society. We walked through and saw the Palm House (palmhuset) as well.

We got soup dumplings at a place called 168 (what’s with restaurants only using numbers here, haha?) and figured we would walk a bit more before finding more food. We headed for the Haga neighborhood next, and happened upon a place that is quite popular called Cafe Husaren, which seemed like a good place for “fika” which means coffee, snack, and a little break, all in one.

Now, Cafe Husaren is actually known for their giant cinnamon rolls, but we are only two people and didn’t think we could manage.

During busy times they set up a stand outside for those that just want some pastries to go, but we waited in line inside to get coffees as well. Very good, and fun people watching!

We walked around the Haga district more and then headed up to Slottskogen to get a higher view of the city. Steps were involved.

This was a whimsically painted bus that was a bookmobile.

Anyway, by mid afternoon we were really dragging, so we went back to the room to take naps and get ready for our evening activity, a “shrimp and salmon cruise“, which sounds ridiculous, but I was so excited about it. One thing people and guidebooks said you should do in Gothenburg was see the archipelago, and this evening cruise seemed like a great way to do it while enjoying a fun meal. We weren’t sure what to expect, so let me tell you in case you are reading this and plan to go yourselves. Don’t bother arriving too early, because the seating is assigned, so there’s no benefit to arriving early. We got a nice table by a window in the dining room. You can walk up to the top deck anytime you want, and there is live music in the dining room, but not too loud, just nice dinner music from one man who played guitar and sang. Drinks aren’t included but you can order them, and dessert is also extra. We didn’t get dessert and didn’t feel at all left out.

Our boat. It wasn’t very big, but big enough for the few hours we spent on it. And of course there are bathrooms.

The decor was wood paneling, of course.

They provided wet tissues, which traditionally I am terrified and grossed out by.

The buffet room. It had so many different kinds of herring as well as two kinds of shrimp in the shells, shrimp with mayonnaise, smoked salmon, potatoes, breads and cheeses, various salads, and more. It was quite tasty!

After walking around all day, it was really nice just to have somewhere relaxing to sit and watch the world go by.

It was exciting to see the ocean bus in the water as well, because we had seen it on land earlier!

My first plate of food.

The pictures don’t really do it justice, though I love the water and sky in this one. As we got further from the city the islands got rockier and smaller. Some had houses and other buildings, some had nothing at all. We really enjoyed getting to see it all!

The trip was about 3 hours total, so just a nice amount of time to eat and relax. By the time we got back, we were just about ready to hit the hay, so we walked back to the hotel (at a leisurely pace) and called it a night!

Hi everybody! We are BACK from our epic trip to Sweden and Finland. We were gone for about 2 1/2 weeks and it was amazing. I spent yesterday, the first day home, just sort of doing stuff like unpacking, laundry and going to the grocery store (which was an adventure with my groggy tiredness and jet lag). I was impressed by Louie and I unpacking first thing, but we decided it wasn’t ever going to get any easier so we might as well just go with it. Most clothes were going straight to the laundry anyway! He went to work yesterday, but I get two days off: yesterday I did some emailing and catchup, but today I’ll be doing a bit more getting ready for the semester (setting up my billing) and I suppose I should do some practicing to see if I still know how to play the violin!

We may have gone a bit overboard with the chocolate purchasing, but some of those things are gifts, one of them is potato chips, and some are this stuff called salty licorice that I don’t care for but Louie loves.

Please note this excellent scene on the potato chip bag.

Anyway! Let’s begin. I don’t know if I will stick with one day at a time here, or what, but that’s what I wanted to start with to make the pictures feel more manageable. I called this title Day 1 and 2 because we left on a Saturday but arrived on a Sunday.

Let’s set the scene: or that is, some background. Did I tell you why we decided to visit Sweden and Finland? The idea sort of snowballed from a variety of things, but basically, we both loved Norway so much but felt it was too soon to revisit Norway so we would see another Scandinavia country (Sweden) which Louie had visited more than 20 years ago. But also, he had never been to Finland, so I wanted to add that on, and then we also ended up doing a short jaunt to Estonia as well, just a quick overnight via ferry. We started with a 2 week plan but things expanded with travel times…and so here we are. There and back, and it was terrific.

We had an afternoon flight to Chicago, which was delayed, but not a problem since I chose a connection that gave room for some delays. We had tortas at the Frontera Grill in O’Hare (and got to ride a little bus from one terminal to another without having to leave the secure area), and waited for our “big” flight to board. We had upgraded our seats on the way out to the “slightly more leg room” seats in the hopes we would be more comfortable and sleep better.

The seats were as comfortable as economy class seats can be, and I also used a new neck pillow from Wander which worked well. The flight went by quickly enough: not quickly enough to get a good nights sleep, but quickly enough to get to Helsinki.

We had a layover in Helsinki as well and got some coffees and juice and waited for our last connection to board. Helsinki to Gothenburg was next, and it was a short flight.

We landed in Gothenburg and I had to wait on a bag. We hadn’t intended to check anything on our flights over, but I was bullied by a gate agent into checking my suitcase, which normally wouldn’t matter too much but then we waited about 45 minutes or more for the bags! It was ridiculous and I was mad at myself and the agent.

We got bus tickets on the Flygbussarna, a bus from the airport to the center of Gothenburg, and off we went. I sometimes remember the first time I was in Europe and was fascinated by the different sorts of road signs…it doesn’t pop out as much now, but it’s still fun to notice the different signs and all of the little details that are different from one country to the next. We had a little confusion over which stop to get off because evidently the stop is different on the weekends versus the weekday, but we got off the bus and then used google maps to navigate the 10 or so minute walk to our hotel, the Elite Plaza Hotel Gothenburg, our home for the next 3 nights.

The typical Scandinavian bed set-up: two separate duvet covers. The headboard here was ridiculous and not typical. The room was very nice and in a great location.

The hotel, from across the street. We got cleaned up and headed out in search of an actual meal. Lucky for us it was already about 7 or 8 pm by this point, so we could eat and go straight to bed rather than having to force ourselves to stay awake longer. We had burgers at a nearby restaurant called 2112 and was a rock and roll themed bar. It was jarring to be in a different country, but exhilarating! Sweden uses the Swedish Kronor which you basically divide by 10 in order to think of the dollar amount, but it’s not exactly that. And nobody uses cash, it’s all cards.

After dinner we walked around near the hotel and the water as the sun started to set. I did not get to see if it set all the way down because I was too exhausted.

It’s a working harbor for sure! And so many cobblestones….

Stay tuned for the next installment!