Viking Tour Part Two

Our Viking Coaster Tour continued with the fourth park of the trip, Farup Sommerland. This was another fantastic park, with great natural scenery. It also happened to have what ended up being my favorite coaster of the trip, Fønix. Our day started with a behind the scenes tour of the coaster, where we were able to visit the maintenance room and talk with the head mechanic before riding. The rest of the park had a lot of attractions, including things like canoes and kayaks that were common across many of the parks on this trip. One of the highlights was an extremely long obstacle course that wound through trees and over water. It took more than half an hour to complete. One part had a bridge over a small canal, but also a monkey bar option. We saw a very unfortunately teenager who made it most of the way across on the monkey bars before falling into the waist-deep water! The day ended with more exclusive ride time on Orkanen, a very comfortable family suspended coaster.

Welcome to Farup!

Touring the maintenance bay.

Me with some blueprints.

Walking around the track.

Just holding a coaster wheel!

Fonix is a beautiful ride.

Twisting out of the stall loop.

The adorable kiddie coaster!

Gliding over the water on Orkanen.

Self-serve canoes are common in many Scandinavian amusement parks.

The obstacle course.

It went through a pirate ship at one part!

You get a diploma for completing the obstacle course.

Log flume time!

Orkanen has an underwater tunnel on the first drop.

End of the day group picture.

We had one more adventure that day - the ferry to Sweden! Our bus drove to the port city of Frederikshavn, where our bus accidentally backed up into a car (oops, just a slight bump!) before we boarded the ferry. It was a pleasant 3.5 hour ride across the Skagerrak, with sunlight still visible by the time we arrived in Gothenburg after midnight. Luckily it was a short ride to our hotel, the Grand Curiosa. This is a spectacular new hotel right next to Liseberg park. Each floor has a different theme, mine was mythical monsters.

Getting ready to board the ferry.

Sunset from the ferry.

The sunlight lasted well after midnight.

Arriving at the hotel late at night.

The rooms are very nice!

The massive art piece in the central atrium. Each part reflects the theming of the floor.

After breakfast in the hotel (in the extremely large breakfast room, complete with carrousel), we met as a group for our morning tour of Liseberg. We got to walk beneath the Balder wooden roller coaster and sign our names on the wood, before some exclusive ride time. During one of our rides they had to manually reset, meaning multiple employees came out to our train on the brake run to pull it forward into the station. Haven't had that happen before!

Liseberg is a fantastic park. It looks great and has great rides. The urban location on a hillside adds a special charm, and many of the rides (including Helix, Lisebergbanan, and the log flume) utilize the terrain. We had a fantastic day at this park, capped off with an evening ERT on Helix while we could kind of hear a Bruce Springsteen concert at the stadium a few miles away.

Yes, there's a carrousel in the lobby.

Scary things on the walls of the 5th floor of the hotel.

View of the park from the hotel. It's very close!

Our walkback around Balder.

Signed our names on the wood.

Morning ERT on Balder. Excellent ride!

Liseberg is a beautiful park.

Haunted lunch location.

Overview of the park from the ferris wheel.

Closeup of Helix. Amazing how it weaves through the trees on the hillside.

A big office development next to the park. Check out the pool halfway up the middle building.

Gothenburg overview from the ferris wheel.

Liseberg is a beautiful park.

Valkyria's first drop.

The park is heavily themed - this is Valkyria's station.

Dinner time.

Me and Kyle on the log flume.

Helix in the evening.

Exclusive ride time!

After a long day at Liseberg, I had a good night's sleep at the hotel. Our next day was a long one, with a long drive back to Denmark and two park visits. I'll cover just the Swedish first half of the day in this post. To break up the four hour drive to southern Sweden, we played bingo on the bus, with coaster prizes. We arrived at Tosselilla late morning. It's was probably the "least good" park of the trip - still a lot of fun, but this growing park needs time to settle in. For now it's like a sprawling filed with some fairground rides sprinkled in. It's mostly geared toward families and children. We also missed a credit here, as unfortunately Mad Mouse was closed. After a few hours in the park, we boarded the bus again and headed back to Denmark across the Øresund bridge, the longest road/rail bridge in Europe.

So many breakfast options.

Tim's what?!

Waiting to enter Tosselilla. I like their crazy duck mascot!

First missed credit of the trip.

The family coaster was unfortunately a bit rough.

Pirate ship and water park.

Crossing the bridge.

Next stop - Copenhagen!

Stockholm

Our final stop in Sweden was Stockholm, the capital city. Stockholm has a humongous selection of museums and we had to plan our time carefully to make sure we got to do most of the things we wanted.  Rather than staying in a hotel, we used airbnb to rent an apartment in the bohemian Södermalm neighborhood. The first thing we noticed about Stockholm was that there was no snow!  In fact, our entire time in Stockholm was above freezing.  The heat wave continues!  

We arrived in the late afternoon and visited the photography museum, a short walk from our apartment. It had some neat rotating exhibits. Next we had dinner at Tradition Restaurant, know for having classic Swedish dishes. Yes, David got Swedish meatballs! We finished the day with a very interesting night at Oliver Twist bar. Drunk Swedes are a lot more talkative than sober Swedes and some of them sure do love Twin Peaks!

Our apartment. Much more space than a hotel!

(O_o) Swedish is a fun language...

Finally!  Some meatballs.

Janice enjoying some local beer and potato dumplings

On our first full day in Stockholm, we covered a lot of ground (13.4 miles of walking, according to David's fitbit). We explored a few neighborhoods, took in the views, and walked around Gamla Stan, the historic center of the city. Gamla Stan is located on its own island, and features narrow streets and a lot of neat shops. Sure, it's touristy, but it's fun. The highlight of the day (and one of the highlights of Sweden) was the Vasa Museum. It's a museum built specifically for a 17th century war ship that sank just off Stockholm on its maiden voyage. The ship was finally raised and restored in the 1960s, after more than 300 years under water. The Vasa is surprisingly intact, with some really elaborate carvings. It was definitely one of the most unique and interesting museums we've ever visited.

Our street in Södermalm: Folkungagatan

They start hockey players pretty young in Sweden

You're a rikstelefon!  Anything with an 1800s western saloon door is fine by us!

Atlanta has achieved world domination through Coca-Cola

View toward Gamla Stan

A square in Gamla Stan

A surprisingly huge sci-fi bookstore

Staying cool in Gamla Stan

There's water everywhere you look in Stockholm

More walking? Our feet are tired!

A neat piece of art showing the city's daily water and electricity use

Boats and architecture in central Stockholm

The Vasa

The back of the Vasa

Beautiful architecture on a random building

The next day we went on a winter boat tour of the Stockholm archipelago. It was a much warmer day than average, but was still chilly with the wind blowing off the water. There was a huge tour group of Russian teenagers on our boat, but luckily they were relatively well behaved. It was neat to see the city from the water, even with no snow. Our next stop was the Nobel Museum. It's a little small (they're moving/expanding soon), but had neat kiosks with information on every Nobel prize winner. It was fun to search through and find some familiar winners, like Martin Luther King Jr, Watson and Crick, Al Gore and the IPCC, and Doctors Without Borders. After, we watched the changing of the guard at the royal palace and then toured the palace itself.

Unusually warm and sunny for a winter boat tour!

Gamla Stan from the water

Gröna Lund! Unfortunately closed for the winter. :(

It was a bit windy and Peter is very delicate, like a flower

Walking in Gamla Stan

Exhibit on the precursor to the polio vaccine Nobel prize

The changing of the guard

Our new Swedish boyfriend

More like Sir Tastes-like-crap

On our last day in Sweden, we visited the Nordiska Museum. It's in a neat historic building, and houses exhibits on Swedish life and culture. This would be a good first stop for people visiting Sweden - it includes everything from a comprehensive exhibit on the indigenous Sámi people to a display on the use of stripes in contemporary Swedish design.We took another long walk around a few different neighborhoods, taking in the architecture and streetlife, and stopping by the Saluhall, a big food market.

The front entrance of the Nordic Museum

Inside the Nordic Museum

Swedish people from the 1970s! Run!

A taco truck! Unfortunately they were out of tacos.

The Saluhall

Yummy Vasterbotten cheese

There wasn't much snow for the children's winter Olympics festival!

The central library

Sweden was a great destination and a unique country. All in all, over the course of the trip we walked about 75 miles in 10 days. We saw frozen lakes and mountains, fjords and reindeer, a major world city and small Scandinavian hamlets. Going in the winter provided a unique experience with a cheaper price tag. Maybe we'll come back some day in the summer, but  in our opinion winter is the time to go. Before we return to Sweden, there are 150 more countries in the world we haven't visited...yet!