Gothenburg, Sweden

In a pre-pandemic world this dog and pony show of a blog was used as my travel diary for our various exotic travels.  A year of continental imprisonment followed by two upcoming decades of parental imprisonment put a swift end to such extravagance!

But living in Europe now means we can travel to foreign destinations relatively easily, in theory.  After readjusting to life in Norway for nine whole months I was more than ready to stretch my legs a bit and go somewhere.  Anywhere (outside of Norway)!  But with a nearly 2 year old in tow I didn't dare go somewhere too difficult to travel to or navigate.  Preferably driving distance.  Gothenburg, Sweden is about our only option then, 3 hours away by car.

Another reason for this weekend trip is that I wanted to test the waters of traveling for leisure with a kid.  Is it enjoyable?  Is it worth it?  Is it a form of self-flagellation that should be avoided at all costs?  There's only one way to find out!

We had actually been to Gothenburg before, in May 2008, fourteen years prior.  That's nearly 1.5 decades!  

We were so young and so free back then!  And lacking many wonderful life experiences, I will note.  Sadly most of our photos from that trip didn't survive due to a faulty hard drive and early 00'ss us not being smart with backups.

Older and wiser now, we back our shit up and have so much more baggage with 22-month-old Mona Freya in tow.  

This was her first real travel trip, despite already flying many, many miles in her short life.  Those trips were always to move, visit people or escape imprisonment so this was the first time we went anywhere as a family of 3 with the sole purpose of being a tourist.

Our first stop was the Stora Saluhallen: 

Known as the Market Hall in English, this ornate building houses a variety of retail and dine-in food outlets that aren't particularly pram friendly so we didn't make ourselves too comfortable.  However I did take away an amazing bahn mi (Vietnamese baguette) and enjoyed it later while soaking in this bad boy:

I think the crowning achievement of my education on traveling with kids on this trip is the brilliance of eating sandwiches in the bathtub.  Hey, lights go out early in a hotel room shared with a toddler, and Norway is bizarrely devoid of my one true love - bathtubs - so this is a win-win solution.

With a 7 p.m. bedtime to accommodate we didn't have too much leisure time on Friday after an early dinner.  Back in 2008 we would have found a local watering hole to enjoy myriad adult beverages until the wee hours, but on this trip we had to wrap it up much earlier.

The best we could do is a wander around town for a bit, batting cigarette butts out of Freya's hand before she could put them in her mouth.  Ahh, children.  It's a miracle any of them survive to adulthood.

The next day we started out with my absolute favorite thing about traveling in Scandinavia, the deluxe hotel buffet breakfast.  I have been loving on this cultural juggernaut for well over a decade now on this very blog, and it was a freaking delight to get back in the saddle of this massive and abundant tasty spread. 

After our morning feed we wandered around for a bit and found a playground to burn off some pre-nap energy.  God kids are exhausting!

Luckily it was located in a picturesque park, so there was more to see than just swing sets and monkey bars.

We then made our way to the seaside to see some nautical sights, including this gigantic 100+ year old boat that's moored to the dock, that I didn't realize until this very minute is a "botel" - a boat hotel:

That is really freaking cool!  It's really close to the Gothenburg opera house, which prides itself on being "modern":

But compared to Sydney and Oslo I think it's quite boring and underwhelming.  However I'm sure the waterfront views from inside, which I did not see, kick it up a few notches.

Our biggest tourist activity for the day, which we had also done 14 years prior, was a canal boat tour.

And O.M.G. did it suck ass.

Not that there was anything wrong with the boat or the tour; both were perfectly lovely.  We were just inexperienced tourist parents who shot our own selves in the foot.  When we saw this:

Our dumb asses thought, "Great, let's go back to the hotel and lay her down there and get a solid 2 hour nap out of her before the boat trip."  FOOLS!  

We could have left her just where she was and achieved our goal of a good nap, with the added bonus of us basking in sunshine and drinking beer like our travels of yesteryear.  What we got was a toddler who couldn't be transferred to bed and slept for about 15 minutes (a fraction of what is necessary) before taking her exhausted ass out on a slow moving boat into open water.  FOOLS!

She was an absolute mess and we were 100% those parents that you simultaneously loathe and pity out in public dealing with a demonic hell child spawn of Satan.  It was awful, and we were all super miserable.  Don't let the smiles before departure fool you!

Lesson learned: if they need to sleep and fall asleep in a pram leave them there!  I'm sure the tour was great for people on the boat that departed every other time that day but ours.

Another gamble we took, which paid off better but still wasn't a 100% success, was going out to eat at a decent restaurant.

Ethiopian food!  Something we'd had a few times in Brisbane before but it had been a long time.  

The place was a lot more popular and trendy than we had anticipated, so cramming a toddler into a small corner table was not our finest work.  But it wasn't a gigantic failure like the boat trip, and thankfully they had child-placating fries on the menu!  I think the key to dining out success is to be in and out by 5:30 p.m. to avoid contact with any human beings that aren't economically forced to be there and be nice to you.

On the way home we walked through the empty and hilariously named:

I personally cannot believe the name Adolf survives in any format.  He was a king of Sweden in the 1600s, so to be fair this dude is totally innocent.

As we were walking through the square, enjoying terrorizing the local pigeon population, I realized that Freya had a dirty nappy.  A really dirty, stank nappy.  We could have rushed back to the hotel to take care of it but she was having such a good time running around that I decided to do the deed right then and there, giving 'ol Gustaf Adolf quite a show.

We had a big day Sunday planned, and after another exquisite Scandinavian buffet breakfast we promptly left Gothenburg city center for the 'burbs:

Wild times ahead: we went grocery shopping!  What impresses my Norwegian eyes is that it is open every single day for 17 straight hours!  Beyond impressive compared to [my corner of] Norway, where almost nothing is open on Sundays, especially at the crack of dawn.

Food (and booze) in Sweden is significantly cheaper than Norway.  There is a hugely popular shopping center just across the border, 40 minutes from home, that we frequent.  However it is targeted to Norwegians so compared to most Swedish grocery stores it is still overpriced.  No Swede would ever shop there, but millions of Norwegians do!  

My brilliant plan was to hit up a real Swedish grocery store, far from the border, and enjoy even more savings.  I even brought coolers for this planned shopping extravaganza!  50% grocery savings nearly paid for this whole trip (exaggeration, but the savings are legit)!

After our grocery haul, about halfway back home we went to Nordens Ark, a large open air zoo.

This being open air you don't get too close to most animals, especially the coolest ones (leopards, tigers and lynx...or is it lynxes?)  Most photos aren't particularly blog-worthy, either.  But there's tons of space and this being a zoo kids can run amok and nobody will side eye you.  I realize the importance of this feature now!

There was a big group of women and kids there also, who I realized (from their Russian-sounding language and pins they were wearing) were refugees from Ukraine.  Ouch, my heart!  They had been forcefully removed from their homeland for 3 months at that point, barely a fourth of a year.  A humbling moment for me to realize that I have nothing - absolutely nothing - to complain about.  I think my motto in life is, "much to be grateful for".

 

And that's a wrap!  Our very first, purely for pleasure leisure travel as parents.  

Did we survive?  Yes.  Did we learn a few things the hard way?  Did we ever.  Was it particularly relaxing?  Not really.  Are we scared off from ever attempting this again?  Surprisingly and crazily, no we are not!