Göteborg For The Weekend

Last night was a long night for Christine as she tried to finish her school paper before this weekend. Before Jen went to sleep, Christine told her that Therese and Mikael would be at our apartment at 10:30 to pick us up. She was awake all night long. Then, she decided at 7am to try and get some sleep, just as Jen’s numerous alarms started to go off. After we both were up and starting to get ready for the day, Jen traveled to the school to get her bike and bring it home. We were afraid that if left at school, it might be stolen. Jen arrived back at the apartment a little after 10am. Christine says, “So... Therese told me they would be here at 10:30am because she was telling us a half hour earlier than they were really coming.” Ha! We have only been here 1 month, and our friend, Therese already knows the routine with us. We both struggle to get out of the apartment on time, and are late to pretty much everything (although we have been doing a much better job getting to class on time than in past semesters).

Therese and Mikael let us hitch a ride with them to Goteborg. We were coming for a weekend trip, and they were also coming to attend a birthday party for Mikael’s nephew. We were dropped off at the Central Station and started looking for a tourist place to get a map. After we walked in a circle, we discovered the tourist office. We found where our hotel was on a map and decided that was where we wanted to go before doing anything else. We found the hotel with no problems and were awe struck. We knew it was a renovated ship docked in the harbor, but we didn’t expect just how cool it really is. Our room is lakeside and we have an amazing view from our window. There is one king bed (for Christine) and a loft bed that folds down! (for Jen)

After setting our things down in the room, we decided to explore Goteborg.
Neither one of us has ever vacationed without a detailed plan of action. So, we decided to be spontaneous for once! We were just going to walk around and find the first thing that interested us. We were very excited to have no plans. Then, we remembered that Mikael told us that we need to take the tram for pretty much everything in the city. So, just walking around wasn’t going to be the best idea. We decided to head back to the Tourist office, purchase the Goteborg pass which gives us free admittance to several attractions, and choose one place to head to first. We chose to go to the Maritime museum. It had three floors to it. The first floor was interesting. It explained Charles Darwin, his voyage on the Beagle, and a little bit of his Evolution theory. There were large and small tanks with marine life from various types of water (such as lake, rock wall, kelp forest, North Sea…). The second floor was more about the fisherman’s life, what it was like to build a ship, fish on a ship, and the perspectives of their wives. The third floor was a showroom of wooden models of various ships. All in all, the museum was fine, but not great. We hope for much more excited tomorrow.

After the museum we were starving, and decided to go to an American favorite, Pizza Hut. After dinner we headed back to our hotel. We heard a speech and were curious, so we took a detour to see what it was, and it was a wedding! We were so excited to witness the toasts of a Swedish wedding. After passing the wedding reception, we came across a silver car. Jen said “I still wonder what brand car this is” and no sooner did the passenger’s head pop up. Hehe. We were embarrassed for noticing the “parked car." Jen tried to make it less awkward by totally ignoring the observation. Meanwhile, Christine is cracking up and Jen also catches the giggles.

The sun was starting to set as we arrived back at the hotel, so we grabbed our cameras went to the top deck and took some pictures. It sure was beautiful to see the sun set on the lake.