One Last Time

When you suspect it might be your last chance to explore a city, what do you do? You go to all of the places that you would have visited if you'd only had one chance to visit. On our last trip to Gothenburg, we finally visited a few of the must-see attractions that we'd somehow skipped on all of our previous trips to the big city.

Day 1. First stop: Liseberg. It's an amusement park located right in the middle of the city. It's the most popular destination in town and impossible to ignore. You can see the twisting coasters, tall Ferris wheel, and freefall ride from the highway as you arrive.

We arrived just after the park opened and went straight to Helix, Scandinavia's longest and fastest roller coaster. Jeremy and I got in line and pondered aloud how the two of us, who LOVE roller coasters, managed to have two children who have no interest in them. The ride was fast and smooth, with unexpected moments of weightlessness. My mouth was entirely dry by the end of the ride because I was alternately laughing and screaming the entire time.

Just a taste of the ridiculousness that is Helix

After making the girls wait around for us to have the first ride of the day, it was only fair that we headed straight for the kid's area, Kaninlandet (Rabbit Country). It was designed for younger kids, but the girls were happy to be in an area where they could go on everything, and the whole place was just ridiculously cute.

These cars had bicycle pedals inside

Swedish Dumbo... Swumbo?

At the end, each kid gets a boat captain's license. With photo.

Savannah swingin'

Serious competition for "Happiest Place on Earth"

Liseberg was like Swedish Disneyland, if Disneyland were in the middle of downtown LA. And had better rides for adults. And had a vegan buffet restaurant. And two concert venues. And wild strawberries and forested paths and hydrangea and giant candy bars as game prizes and... I guess it's only like Disneyland in that they are both aggressively clean and lovely amusement parks.

My plate from "The Green Room"

The teacups are coffee cups because Sweden.

View of the city, from the top of the Ferris wheel

Day 2. After a fabulous breakfast, Jeremy dropped us off at the Göteborgs stadsmuseum (Gothenburg City Museum) and he took off for a full day of dance camp. The girls and I learned about the origins of the city, cruising through exhibits on the Bronze Age, the Viking Age, and Gothenburg in the 1600s.

That's a bike rack in the shape of a car!

Trying on ruffled collars... not impressed.

Shame! Shame!

This golden beauty used to sit outside an apothecary in the 1800s.

The main reason I wanted to visit this museum was to see Sweden's only original viking vessel. As a bonus, the building housing the museum was originally the headquarters for the Swedish East India Company. (Did you know that Sweden had a short-lived colony on the Delaware River in the 1600s? And that they were likely the first people to build log cabins in North America?! Neither did I!)

Viking swords!

A (partial) Viking ship!

Viking age statue of Thor... isn't he adorable?

Another unexpected surprise: the museum had a beautiful, light-filled, children's area. The target age for this play room was likely younger than my girls' ages, but they didn't care and happily played alongside the two toddlers who were also enjoying the space.

Playing fika

 Play trolley, modeled after old trolleys still in use

Next we walked to a section of town called Haga, notable for it's over-sized cinnamon rolls. The district was about halfway between the two museums I was marching the girls between, so it made a perfect rest stop.

Quiet Sunday afternoon Haga

It's always fika time

At the natural history museum, I had one goal: to see the world's only stuffed blue whale. It has been a long time since I've visited a natural history museum, so I hadn't pictured such an abundance of animals. A long cabinet housed drawers upon drawers full of insects. The mammal hall held all of the charismatic mega-fauna you could hope for... elephant, giraffe, lion, moose, bison, grizzly, gorilla, etc., etc. The mammal room was surrounded on all sides by hallways full of every bird on earth. It was like the greatest zoo ever, only everything was dead.

She is 150 million years old. And Chinese.

Center stage in the hall of mammals

Lion cubs. Dead, but still cute.

The blue whale itself was not as impressive as I'd hoped. Turns out he was a young whale, so not quite as massive as one might suspect. The story of how he came to be stuffed in a museum is quite entertaining, as is the reason his jaw is no longer propped open so visitors can climb inside. Glad I saw him, nonetheless.

So ends perhaps our final visit to Gothenburg. There are at least a dozen places in the city I'd already like to visit again. I hope we'll get another chance to explore there. Someday.