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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.