Bobby and I took a long-weekend trip up to Göteborg (or Gothenburg, its English name), Sweden last weekend. We had a wonderful time in this sea-side town. This trip was actually planned by Bobby as a romantic get-away for us. It was kind of nice to let go of the reins and 'allow' Bobby to plan a trip :) I might have to let him do this more often!
Bobby had visited Göteborg in 2002 (just a month before we met!), but it was my first time visiting the second largest city in Sweden. The city is the home of Volvo, which leaves me with mixed feelings (I love Volvo cars, but the one I had was such a lemon!). But nonetheless, we really enjoyed our time there.
The city has tons of large parks, which were well occupied by the city's citizens for the warm weekend. It's actually quite easy and cheap to get to Göteborg from Copenhagen: it's only a 3 1/2 hour train ride away.
So far, every city I've visited in Sweden has been great: Stockholm, Malmö, and now Göteborg. I really love Sweden: interesting culture, good music and art scene, and great food scene! In fact, I'm going to have to write two separate posts to tell you about the two restaurants we visited in Göteborg.
So for now you'll just have to settle for a photo of the fried herring we enjoyed. This meal, complete with mashed potatoes and lingonberry jam, was purchased from a very hip food truck in the downtown area. The fish was lovely and cooked perfectly.
We visited two museums: the
Konstmuseum (Art Museum) and the
Stadsmuseum (City Museum). This neat sculpture, which might look familiar if you like the work of French sculpture Rodin, was one of many interesting modern pieces in the Art Museum. The City Museum was a bit of an odd collection, but it's always fun to see old Viking ruins.
Being in Sweden, we of course had to take note of the hip Scandinavian fashion. Do you like Bobby's new nightcap?
Aside from fashion finds, Bobby also discovered a stamp store! Oddly enough, he left empty handed, but he enjoyed perusing the small shop's collection.
I, on the other hand, got quite excited at this chocolate store! All of the chocolates are made with natural ingredients and don't contain any preservatives.
Which means we have to eat this box of chocolates in good time! I'm pretty sure we are up for the challenge. In fact, half of the box has already been enjoyed.
Speaking of challenges... Bobby decided our romantic weekend away should naturally include a midnight 10k race! What, your romantic get-aways don't include running 10 kilometers in a foreign land? This photo shows just a few of the 13,000 participants in the race.
Here we are before the race, looking fresh and happy. Actually, at this point, I had a head cold: all day I was trying to decide whether or not I could do the race. Luckily, we took a nap the afternoon prior to the race, and it really helped me to feel up for the run.
The midnight run is actually an event held in several cities across Sweden. It's a pretty fun race: there's a lot of music at different stages of the race, some people dress in funny costumes for the run (we saw one young woman in a polar bear outfit, and she ran the entire race in the outfit!!), and you get to run through the city late at night. Here you can see Bobby in kilometer 1, tripping the light fantastic.
Bobby and I did do a bit of training leading up to the race: together we went on 4 or 5 jogs in Copenhagen, never going further than 7 km. So we weren't totally sure what 10 km would feel like. However, we not only managed to finish the race, we ran the entire course (no walking at all) and finished in 1 hour 13 minutes! Not bad for first-timers with very little training and a head cold!
Thank you for a lovely weekend away, Bobby! I can't wait for our next trip, wherever and whenever that may be!
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