Gothenburg

On a long weekend I traveled to visit friends in Gothenburg Sweden. If you are familiar with my blog, you know I'm a fan of lions and Gothernburg had some lovely ones. This one was sitting in a less formal pose compared to his twin with his paws crossed and his hind legs on one side.

Compared to many other European cities (especially Switzerland), Gothenburg had great wide streets.

On our first full day we started by having tea and cake for brunch. Chocolate cake for brunch is a good way to start the day. Anyway, in the square was a new hotel and at the top of the building they had a swimming pool that hung out slightly over the square. Thus it was possible to swim suspended above the pavement.

One of the famous statues in the city is the statue of Poseidon in front of the city museum (I think). Anyway, apparently there was much discussion about the size of his ... package and the ladies at the time objected. So they gave him a very small one.

However, when you view the statue from the side, on the steps of the concert hall, you get a very different image.

One of the things we did was to visit the Universeum, a new large science museum. They had some pretty neat displays including a large shark tank with some of the largest sharks I've seen in captivity. They also had a ray tank where you could pet them as they swam by and a rope ladder that crossed the tank. I convinced Maria to go across with me, and learned later there was a sign in Swedish saying only for children....

Also in the Universeum were jellyfish. I always liked the jellyfish display at the Vancouver aquarium.

Erik insisted I take a picture of the Scarlet Ibis in the jungle section and I said they were boring and you could find them everywhere. However, Erik posed so here's his picture of the Ibis.

Running around in the jungle exhibit were several monkeys.  One of the monkeys jumped over the trail and sat for a while until it snatched a butterfly out of the air. Hmmm, that's why there were so few of them fluttering around.  Anyway, here is the monkey eating the butterfly, it was stringy and gooey and he ripped off the wings.

In the sport exhibit they had a horse riding simulator. Of course, it was mostly kids who checked it out but dammit I wanted to see how it worked. It was a very sedate ride, even at the canter and you could barely post at the trot. While it had sensors for leg yielding etc it didn't respond at all.

Apparently right now in Sweden is the crab season and we went to Erik's brother's house for a lovely crab dinner. Maria is saying hello to the food.

More crab tails on the plate.

Anyway, what you do is eat a lot and drink schnapps. You have to sing before you can drink though, and you drink a lot... They have a saying Sweden, that for the Swedes you sing three songs and take a drink. The Russians sing once and drink three drinks and the Finnish have two songs. One short song is just the word "now" and then they drink. Their longer song is "not now, .... but now" and then they drink (I hope I have the nationalities correct).

On Sunday we traveled to Gotehenburg's Southern Archipelago, specifically the island of Branno. There are a bunch of islands with ferries connecting them and they are popular places to live and vacation in the summer.

Here I am on the boat with the Swedish flag.

Wandering around the small villages/collections of houses was really nice. Here we are at the highest point on the island. Erik and Maria have been away from Vancouver too long based on what they now call mountains...

The weather was generally cool and overcast, but sometimes it was warm enough to remove both the coat AND the sweater.

In the middle of the island we stopped to have a tasty lunch. I ordered mussels with the fries but they only brought me the mussels appetizer. When I said I had ordered the meal they brought me not just the fries but another plate of mussels. And then on the bill they only charged for the appetizer because they said they had made the mistake. In contrast, while in Kensington market a few weeks ago, we ordered a plate of vegetarian dumplings. When we bit into them, we found out they were meat. We asked for a replacement and the waitress at first insisted since none of us were 'vegetarians' and we could eat meat, we should just eat th dumplings (gross) we were given. However, we asked to have replacements and she finally removed our plate. But then said that she can't bring 8 out, because of the meat dumplings, two already had bites in them. So.... she was going to put the rest back in the freezer? Anyway, instead we didn't pay and got up and left. However, word of warning, I'd be cautious of eating at a thai place in Kensington market in Toronto. Anydigression...

After the island we went to Scandinavia's largest amusement park! I like the fakeness of amusements, combined with the sugar and all the rides. I wanted cotten candy (which I got) and here I am posing with the froggy ride that Erik wanted me to go on. It's a gravity drop ride for very little children... ok, sure, I rode the horse at the museum, and crossed that rope bridge over the stingray pond, but I do draw the line at some point....

At the amusement park we rode the wooden rollercoaster which was pretty fantastic.

On my last day I wandered around the town before catching my flight home.

I visited two churches up on the hill, here's one in a traditional Swedish style, even though the church is relatively new.

Inside was exposed timber.