Saturday, July 7, 2007

Day Out in Goteborg

We decided to stay an extra day in Goteborg as there is a lot to see in the city. First we went down and booked a ferry for tomorrow morning to Frederishavn in Denmark. Then we started on the museums.

The first was the Art Gallery. As you would expect, we liked the Impressionists but we saw lots of works by well known painters from Rembrandt to Picasso.

Then we moved on to Sweden's Museum of Design and Decorative Arts. This was particularly interesting with exhibits ranging from a special exhibition on colours, a display of 13 dresses actually made from floral printed paper in the styles from 1800 to the present day. We saw furniture, design and glassware as well as exhibits from Japan and China and lots more.

We moved on to a nautical theme starting with the Maritiman, the world's largest floating museum of historic ships. We were up and down ladders, through narrow passages, you name it, we did it. We crawled through a submarine, explored a destroyer, investigated a fire fighting boat and lots more.

After that we caught the ferry across to Alvsborgs Fastning, the fortress at the entrance to the river. This fortress dated from 1700 but there has been one there since 1300. It was a most interesting ferry trip.

Our final museum was the City Museum, housed in the old Swedish East Indies building. We explored it chronologically starting with the Stone Age and a fascinating 4,500 year old skeleton. There was an interesting display on the Vikings including the remains of a boat. We then went on to Mediaeval times and up to the present day. The vacuum cleaner that we recently threw out from Conjola was on display.

Despite the light drizzle, we decided to do the paddan boat trip on a canal boat and explored the canals that give the city its name as the Amsterdam of Sweden along with the harbour. We saw lots of places including the Fish Church which is actually the fish market but it loooks like a church. One couple even got married there. Fancy getting married amongst that smell.

Off to Denmark tomorrow but we will return to Sweden in a week.

2 comments:

theotherbear said...

I'm not sure I would cope with being married in a fish church!

Miss Di said...

The museums sound fascinating! Especially the Maritiman (but of course all us nova castrians have a thing about boats).