Goteborg

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Sweden Summer, Part Six: Sailing, Cycling, and Making Connections

The sixth installment of my daughter and my August 2026 visit to Sweden.

The Kattegat Sea near Sandvik in Torslanda with a view of the Stena Line ferry to Denmark and a rock with seals

On our third day in Göteborg, we took the tram again toward Liseberg. Near the amusement park is the World of Volvo, a museum about the company and its history. Neither C nor I are particularly interested in cars, though C has now joined the Car Club at school, so maybe this visit had an impact? I may have dreamed of owning a Corvette or a Porsche when I was a teenager, but I never dreamed of owning a Volvo. Still, we were trying to experience quintessential Sweden, and it seemed worth a visit.

The lobby alone screamed Scandinavia. With its light wood, clean lines, and open space, it naturally reminded me of an IKEA showroom. They are both Swedish companies, after all.

We spent about an hour going through the exhibits, learning about Volvo’s history, its involvement in car racing, the evolution of its designs, and the different types of vehicles it makes. There were also interactive activities. One was a driving game that several adults were trying. The game kept giving me low scores, and I had a sinking suspicion Volvo thought I wasn’t the best driver. A wind tunnel demonstrated how a car’s shape affects its aerodynamics, and another exhibit explored how a driver’s mood can affect driving.

It was an interesting visit, and I’m glad we went. It was an unusual choice for us, but it gave us a different kind of cultural experience. I’ll include a photo or two, but I won’t spend a lot of time on it.

C tries out the wind tunnel at the World of Volvo

Afterward, we walked up the street to the Grand Curiosa Hotel, the whimsical hotel associated with Liseberg. We have stayed at some Disney properties, so I wanted to take a look. We had chosen to stay closer to the train station, which worked well for us, but Grand Curiosa looked like a lot of fun. It had playful, fantastical decor and even a slide inside. It seemed like a fun place to stay, and with the tram connecting it to the center of town, it wasn’t far away. I found myself wishing we had stayed there for at least one night.

Then we got lunch and headed to the Universeum. It is a science and nature museum that also houses an aquarium, which was a big draw for us. We love aquariums and have visited many all around the world. The tropical rainforest was another highlight. It took up several floors in the center of the building and reminded me of the rainforest room at the Baltimore Aquarium.

There were sloths in the rainforest area though they were inside an enclosure. It would have been a bit cooler if they had been free to roam, but there were also two toucans that seemed to have the run of the place. You could climb into a treehouse and cross suspension bridges above the exhibits. It was really well done and a lot of fun.

We also spent time in the space area, since C is interested in space and space exploration. She has even attended Euro Space Camp twice. She was interested in the math section, too, but by then we were getting tired, so gave the health section only a very cursory look. After several hours at two museums, we had had enough for the day.

We walked back to the hotel by different streets, giving us another chance to explore the city, and then rested before our big evening experience.

Then central rainforest at the Universeum

Early in the trip I happened to be looking at the requirements for Scouting America’s International Spirit Award. One option involved traveling overseas and meeting up with scouts. As were were traveling abroad at that very moment, I thought maybe we should look into visiting with some Swedish Scouts. You might recall that while in Stockholm we had encountered some scouts from the UK in Gamla Stan. When I spoke with them, and they told me they had spent a week on an island with Swedish scouts and showed me the neckerchiefs they had swapped. That conversation stayed with me.

I had found a Facebook group for Swedish scouting and posted that we were traveling through the country and would be in Göteborg, Stockholm, and Visby in the coming days and wondered if any troops would be open to meeting with an American Scout. There was a significant response, and a Sea Scout ship just outside Göteborg invited us to join them for a meeting.

That evening, we took a bus to Torslanda (which means “Thor’s Land”). The skipper and his fifteen-year-old daughter, who was also a scout, picked us up at the bus stop and took us to the marina where their Sea Scout ship was meeting. The meeting turned out to only be a gathering before sailing.

C went out with two fourteen-year-old girls from the ship, while the skipper and another adult leader took me out in their boat. I had imagined I would be hanging out in some marina meeting room while C sailed, but instead, I found myself sailing on the Kattegat Sea as the sun was setting. What had started as an effort to arrange a scout meeting had become an unexpected evening on the water.

We were out for about two hours. The skipper was a former Swedish Navy officer who had searched for mines in the Baltic Sea during his naval career. He told me he had grown up in Stockholm where sailing was a tad easier than Göteborg, given that in the former it takes time to travel through the archipelago to the sea, while in Göteborg it took no time to reach open water. In the distance we watched the ferry to Frederikshavn, Denmark, head out from Göteborg, saw family fishing boats searching for their catch, and caught some seals resting on some rocks.

It was beautiful out there in the bay, with the evening light over the water and C sailing nearby with her new companions. We had come to Sweden to explore its history and culture, but this was something I could not have arranged simply by buying a ticket. People we had never met had welcomed us into their evening and taken us sailing. It was an unforgettable experience.

C and her companion Swedish Sea Scouts sail nearby

C especially connected with the two girls she sailed with. They were curious about America and her scouting experiences, and she was curious about theirs. They shared an interest in scouting, and Sea Scouts in particular, but they were also just teenage girls. Along with talking about sailing and scouts, they were swapping stories and connecting over Instagram or Snapchat. It was really special to see how much they had in common despite living in different countries.

When the boats returned, everyone gathered in a circle to talk about the evening. They thanked C and me for coming and presented us with patches from their ship. The skipper also gave C one of their neckerchiefs, which she was especially proud to receive. She left with something to remember the evening by and new friends she could keep in touch with.

The skipper drove us back to the bus station, and we rode back into Göteborg. What a tremendous evening. I had hoped C might meet some Swedish scouts; I had not expected that both of us would come away with one of our most memorable experiences of the trip.

For our final day in Göteborg, we headed out to explore its archipelago. Sweden has more islands than any other country, and a few thousand lie off Göteborg. I had read that visiting the islands was a great way to experience another side of the city: a quieter place to stroll or ride a bicycle through small villages, with the sea never far away.

View from the public ferry to Donso

The southern archipelago is car-free. These islands have year-round communities as well as summer homes, and regular ferries connect them to the mainland as part of Göteborg’s public transportation system. For visitors like us, the ferry ride was an outing; for island residents, it was an everyday connection to the city.

We took the tram from the railway station to the end of the line at Saltholmen, a ride of about forty to forty-five minutes. After waiting another twenty minutes, we boarded the ferry to Donsö. I had chosen that island because we could rent bicycles there, and a bridge connected it to neighboring Styrsö. We could explore two islands without arranging another ferry ride.

It was another absolutely gorgeous day in Sweden: warm, with an incredible blue sky and blue water. We sat on the upper deck so we could watch the islands as we passed. We had bought some crisps at the ferry terminal and snacked as we rode. The trip took about forty to forty-five minutes, with stops at several islands along the way, but it did not feel long.

We arrived at Donsö around 12:30 and went straight to Popsicle Café. It was time for lunch, or rather fika. I had a fantastic green tea latte and a delectable piece of carrot cake, while C chose a beverage and a snack.

I do not think I could ever tire of fika – my green tea latte and carrot cake

Afterward, we collected our rental bicycles and set out to explore. The islands have a long maritime history, and fishing and shipping still play an important role on Donsö. They felt understated to me. We saw some large homes, but nothing that struck me as a grand mansion. There was a simplicity to the villages that I liked.

We rode through villages and around Donsö, stopping at a small, picturesque lighthouse. The ride was surprisingly hilly. Even after our 22-mile ride in Falun, we were struggling a bit with these hills. We crossed the bridge to Styrsö and explored part of that island, though we did not ride all the way around it.

After returning the bicycles, we caught the 4 p.m. ferry back to the mainland and boarded the tram into town. As we rode, I realized that I still wanted to spend more time in Haga, the historic district we had visited briefly on our first afternoon. C was not so keen. She wanted to go back to the hotel and rest, and I suspected she wanted to catch up with friends in the States.

We had traveled between the hotel and this part of town several times, so I asked whether she felt comfortable continuing on the tram without me. I quizzed her on which stop to get off and pointed it out on the route map above our heads. She had her phone and was already accustomed to riding the Metro and buses at home, alone or with friends. It was daytime, and she could stay on the same tram. I was a little nervous, but I felt comfortable letting her go, with instructions to message me as soon as she reached the hotel. At the Haga stop, we went our separate ways. She got back perfectly fine.

My first destination was Skansen Kronan, a late-seventeenth-century fortress on a hill above Haga. The climb was fairly steep, but the views over Göteborg rewarded the effort. I could not go inside the fortress, so I spent some time enjoying the view before making my way down the other side of the hill.

Then I meandered through Haga, one of Göteborg’s oldest districts, wandering its cobblestone pedestrian streets. I passed up the enormous cinnamon roll. Had C been with me, we would have given that a go—the ultimate fika. On my own, I kept walking.

A beautiful view in the Haga district of Göteborg

I followed the canal back toward the hotel, completing a stroll of about two hours. I love walking through a city, getting out and about and developing a feel for it on foot. C had already done plenty of wandering with me, and this gave me time to keep exploring while she rested.

I am glad we kept Göteborg in our itinerary, even with the seven-and-a-half-hour journey to get there. We had experienced a little of everything: Swedish engineering at the World of Volvo, a science museum and aquarium, a wonderful afternoon at Liseberg, cycling through island villages, and plenty of walking around the city. Sailing with the Swedish Sea Scouts was especially meaningful for C, but it gave me something extraordinary, too. We could not see everything, but we made the most of our time there.

It was also lovely to realize that traveling with an increasingly independent teen gives us room to do so much together and occasionally go our separate ways. C could rest and catch up with friends while I wandered through a historic district. After years of traveling as just the two of us, we were reaching a point where we could make space for both.

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Sweden Summer, Part Five: Getting to Goteborg and Riding Roller Coasters

The fifth installment of my daughter and my August 2026 visit to Sweden.

We left Falun early Saturday morning for Göteborg (roughly pronounced “YUHT-uh-bawry”), beginning what would be our longest travel day of the trip.

Early morning lake views from the train

My original plan had been simple: six hours by train, with only one quick transfer early in the journey. I had imagined it as the quintessential long train journey—time to settle in, visit the snack car, gaze out the window, walk through the train to stretch our legs, journal, and maybe nap. Yet when on our first night in Falun I went online to buy our tickets, I discovered that summer track work had changed our routing, turning our six hour journey into seven and half to as long as twelve.

I considered cutting Göteborg from the itinerary. One of the places I had hoped to visit there, Nya Älvsborg Fortress, was already off the table because the reduced late-summer ferry schedule did not fit our visit, so I spent a few hours looking at alternatives. But the track work affected other routes too, hotels were filling up, and nothing I found seemed worth changing the trip for. In the end, Göteborg stayed. We took the shortest option, leaving Falun just before 7:30 in the morning, and instead of one easy train change, we made three: train to bus to train to bus.

It was not the leisurely journey I had envisioned, as it meant watching the time and our connections more carefully, but it still gave Chloe another useful travel lesson—the ability to adapt when plans change. We still had time to relax along the way, and in the end the extra hour and a half cost us surprisingly little. We arrived at the same time as originally planned.

Once off the bus at Göteborg’s Central Station, it was only a hop, skip, and a jump to our hotel. The Hyatt Place Gothenburg Central is integrated into the station complex itself, which made for a very easy arrival after such a long travel day. We checked in, shed our bags, and rested for about an hour before heading back out to get to know the city where we would stay the next few days.

Fountain and flowers at Trädgårdsföreningen

We headed first to Trädgårdsföreningen, the Garden Society of Göteborg, one of Europe’s best-preserved 19th-century parks. At its center is the Palm House, a glass-and-cast-iron greenhouse built in 1878 and modeled on London’s Crystal Palace. The original Crystal Palace was later destroyed by fire in 1936, making Göteborg’s smaller interpretation an interesting survivor of that Victorian style.

We entered the Palm House and wandered inside a bit. Unfortunately, several of the rooms were closed due to renovation, and honestly, after Uppsala’s tropical greenhouse, complete with its poison dart frogs, the pretty Palm House could not compete.

What was unexpected was the nightclub immediately beside the park. At 5 PM it was already in full swing, with people dancing outside and loud, thumping music carrying straight into the gardens. I did not exactly hate the music (though C did), but it did strike me as odd. I had not expected a late afternoon stroll through a European park to come with a ear splitting soundtrack.

From the Garden Society, we continued through Kungsparken, passing a few pretty churches along the way before reaching Haga, one of Göteborg’s oldest neighborhoods. I had wanted to see the area for its cobblestone streets and historic character, but by the time we arrived, C was very much ready to head back to the hotel, and making this known, repeatedly.

We stayed only about ten minutes before turning around. The journey to Göteborg had gone smoothly after all, but it had still been a long day, and we had another walk ahead of us to get back. We took a different route along the canals, having gotten a nice taste of the historic and cultural heart of the city, and returned to the hotel for dinner and some much-needed downtime.

Late afternoon on the Stora Hamnkanalen or the Great Harbor Canal

The next morning, we headed out for one of Göteborg’s classic sightseeing experiences: a Paddan boat tour. The low, open boats travel through the city’s canals and old moat before heading out into the harbor, a little like the canal boats in Amsterdam. The tour lasted about 50 minutes, and we had good weather for it, even if I had managed to end up with a terrible seat.

The guide was informative and funny, and what I enjoyed most were the little bits of history I probably never would have learned otherwise. Göteborg was founded much later than Stockholm, after repeated Swedish attempts to establish a western port ran up against a much more powerful Denmark. An earlier city here was even burned by the Danes before Göteborg was formally founded in 1621. It was another reminder that the Scandinavian countries, which today can seem so closely connected, spent centuries as rivals.

And then there were the bananas. Göteborg was Sweden’s banana port for more than a century, and Swedes apparently developed quite an enthusiasm for a fruit that could not possibly grow anywhere nearby. The guide told us about the country’s prodigious banana consumption, songs about bananas, and how much people missed them when imports largely disappeared during World War II. Of all the history we heard during the tour, somehow the Swedish devotion to bananas was one of the things that stuck with me.

After the Paddan tour, we made our way back toward the train station and caught a tram to Liseberg, Göteborg’s historic amusement park. First opened in 1923, it is regularly ranked among the best in the world.

C and I love amusement parks! We have visited all six Disney parks around the world, along with a handful of other parks in the U.S. I have also visited amusement parks on my own travels in places including South Korea, Indonesia, and Brunei. But this would be C’s first non-Disney amusement park outside the U.S., and I was excited for us to both to try it out. After all the castles and cathedrals, museums and historic neighborhoods, Liseberg stood out as both historic and fun.

A stunning view of Goteborg’s old town from the Vallgraven, the old defensive moat, during our Padden boat tour

One of the things I liked most about Liseberg was how the park used the hillside. It is not a huge park, so it is easy to get around, but the rides are built into and along the slope, with stairs, escalators, and even an elevator helping visitors move between levels. That gave the park a more interesting layout than I expected and made some of the rides feel even more dramatic because of their position on the hill.

We started with Helix, one of the park’s signature roller coasters and often ranked among the best in Europe. The posted wait was only about 30 minutes, which felt like a gift for a major coaster. And it was worth it. Helix has multiple inversions and plenty of speed, and it was thrilling from start to finish. C and I both loved it, and it easily landed among my favorite roller coasters.

Another ride that surprised me was AeroSpin. Each rider sits in an individual plane styled like an old biplane, and a lever lets you control the wings enough to make the plane roll. C was working hard to get hers all the way upside down and came close. I took a different approach. The ride was already plenty exciting without my help.

AeroSpin climbs high above the park and spins around a central tower, but because it sits on the hillside, it feels even higher than it actually is. From the top, you get a sweeping 360-degree view over Liseberg and the surrounding city. Between the height, the spinning, and the possibility of flipping yourself upside down, it turned out to be far more thrilling than I had expected.

We ended up riding every single coaster in the park. Balder, the big wooden coaster, was fun, though it was not one of my favorites. Valkyria, Europe’s tallest and longest dive coaster, surprised me. I have avoided dive coasters thinking they were far too scary. I rode the TMNT Shellraiser coaster at Nickelodeon Universe, a dive coaster currently listed as the world’s steepest, and I hated it because it was so shaky. Valkyria though had the same sort of terrifying pause before the plunge, but the ride felt very smooth in comparison. Still, Helix won my heart as the best coaster at Liseberg and easily one of my favorites anywhere.

Lunch was another pleasant surprise. There was the usual amusement park food, but also Mexican and, rather unexpectedly, Hungarian lángos—a fried flatbread often topped with sour cream and cheese. C decided to try one and really liked it.

Liseberg– Left: an amazing view of the park from the AeroSpin; Right: some of the park’s cute storefronts

And of course, we had to try our luck at a few games. The prizes included enormous bars of chocolate, including Toblerone and Marabou. They were easily two feet long, and we wanted to win. But we were traveling light, and I had no idea how we would carry something that size for the rest of the trip. Unfortunately (fortunately?), luck was not with us, and we did not leave the park with an absurdly large candy bar.

All in all, Liseberg was a fantastic choice. For about $100 for the two of us, we spent the day riding every coaster in the park, ate well, rarely waited very long, and had a really fun day. I would easily put Liseberg near the top of the amusement parks I have visited, and I am so glad I worked it into our itinerary.

When we finally left, we skipped the tram and walked the roughly 30 minutes back to our hotel at the train station. It had been another beautiful day in Göteborg and another great day in Sweden. We had spent most of it outside in fantastic weather, doing something completely different from another museum or historic site and simply having fun together. Those are some of the travel days I treasure most—the ones when C and I get to share something we both love and just enjoy being together. Back at the hotel, we settled in for the evening and got ready for whatever the next day would bring.