Hej!
Today was our last weekend day in Sweden. Since Lauren’s vegan oatmeal wasn’t very good yesterday, we decided to stick with the regular hostel breakfast. The raspberry jam they have here is very delicious and I wish we had it back home After a late night of celebrating the trip birthdays, we got a bit of a slow start to the day, but we were still up and walking around the city by 10:30.
It was another grey rainy Gothenburg day, but I really can’t complain because it’s been in the 40’s most of our stay here. We decided today would be a shopping day as we really have not done much in the way of obtaining souvenirs. We walked through the city towards the Haga district and stopped to take a few architecture and dog photos. The walk was a bit long, but it felt very nice to get some fresh air to wake up and work off some of that bread. In Haga, we stopped in a few of the small shops to look for items to buy. The first was a candy store. It’s very challenging though to try to buy food in a language you don’t understand. Next, we stopped at some touristy stores selling Sweden-related items.
As it was Sunday, not all the shops were open, so we walked through the streets a bit before deciding we wanted to go to a chocolate store in another part of the city. We ran to catch the tram and walked to the shop, only to realize it was also closed. After that, we went to the McDonald’s in Nordstan for lunch. I had a good vegan burger, which isn’t even available in America. We then made our way back to the hostel to relax and blog a bit because we’re all exhausted at this point.
We decided to make a pit stop at this tiny café on the same block as the hostel for a coffee break. I got a delicious smoothie, but that’s unimportant information because we met Bentley the adorable French Bulldog there. He belongs to the owners of the café and was incredibly friendly. Unfortunately, though, we learned about how some people in Gothenburg hate dogs, even though we’ve seen many dogs walking around and how they’ll maliciously put out rat poison or glass for the dogs to eat. Bentley had just experienced this a few weeks ago but was doing much better now!
After some blogging, Lauren and I decided to go to the vegan grocery store a few blocks away. The store is correctly named Happy Vegan because any vegan would be thrilled to walk into a store and have the option to choose from anything on the shelves. We found some nice snacks and ingredients for the iron chef activity later tonight.
Our version of Iron Chef was splitting up into our groups from the cooking class, choosing entrees and desserts, then going to the grocery store to purchase ingredients then made the dishes. My group made both a regular and vegan spinach dip that was very good. For the main dish, we ordered pizza from a local pizza shop. It was nice to have a more low-key dinner in rather than going out.
Daily Reflections
- Swedes love their black licorice, especially if it’s salted.
- White asparagus is good to eat to cover pieces of glass to help them move through the GI tract because it’s so fibrous.
- McDonald’s should serve vegan options, droughts, and beer back in the States (and offer ranch in Sweden).
- Mancala would make a lot more sense if I knew all the rules before starting the game.
- Cars may or may not stop when you cross the street.
- RIP Kobe Bryant
Adventures in Sweden 