National Day in Gothenburg

Gothenburg Opera House

The Barken Viking and the Utkiken

Carrying the flag for National Day

Gothenburg Harbor

The "Fish Church" (Fiskekorka)

As the morning broke brisk and clear Gi and I decided to start our foot tour of Gothenburg with a walk along the waterfront, so we crossed back through the rail station where a cute girl was handing out free Swedish flags and hooked a left past the Nordstam shopping mall to end up alongside the opera house. Just to the east was the four-masted Barken Viking, which is now a floating hotel and nightclub. (I had originally tried to persuade Gi to spend the night there, but she was concerned she might get seasick.) Next to the Viking is the rather garish office tower, the Gothesborg Utkiken, which certainly makes a bold and unique statement on the skyline. After snapping a few shots for posterity we headed west along the harbor, past the floating collection of ships comprising the maritime museum, and hung a left when we reached the Rosenlund canal and the fish market. It was closed today for the holiday, but it was clear why the locals nicknamed the building the "Fish Church." It's a rather endearing piece of architecture in a city chocked full of interesting architecture.

Beautiful architecture

A postcard on every street

Free symphonic concert at the Slottsskogen  

A crowd of about 20,000 at the concert

Poseidon at Gotaplatsen

The Palmhuset at Tradgardsforeningen

Honey locust in the rock garden

Japanese maple

Shooting stars

Flowers

and more flowers

In the flower garden

Didn't we do this already?

Evening along the Rosenlund canal

Sculpture of an old man with a pyramid head

Gi had noticed in the online information for the National Day celebrations that the Gothenburg Philharmonic was going to play a free concert at 2 PM in the Slottsskagen park, so we just followed the crowds headed south along Innegatan, After warm-ups by a youth orchestra and university symphonic group we were treated to some great music. The piece that will stick with me longest will be Orf's "O Fortuna," a familiar and powerful piece. This was the first time I've heard it performed live and it really raised the hairs on the back of my neck. I have no idea whether my estimate of 20,000 in the crowd was close, but there's no doubt they had a great turnout for the event.



Around 3:30 we headed out to continue our tour, hiking up over the hill where the medical school complex is situated and then down through the Chalmers campus until we reached the Gotaplatsen, overlooked by the statue of Poseidon. Unfortunately, the museums were closed for the holiday (not too much luck with museums so far on this trip), so we headed back towards downtown via the Avenyn, a lovely avenue of bars, restaurants, shops, and galleries.


Just before going back across the Rosenlund Canal, we spotted the Tradgardsforeningens Park and took the opportunity to stroll through the gardens. (Tomorrow's tours include the botanical garden out past Slottsskogen, so we decided to catch this garden first.) We were a bit early to enjoy the huge collection of roses, but the rock garden was gorgeous and there were plenty of other flowers and interesting plants to admire.

The hotel was only just around the corner from this garden, so we headed back to the room to clean up and relax a bit before dinner. Unfortunately, we might have been better off staying in our room for dinner. After wandering the streets a bit, we dropped into a little Italian bistro called Mediterrene where we had very nice service from the wait staff, but found the food woefully inadequate. The dishes appeared to have been prepared by a mediocre Swedish cook who had once read a book about Italian food, but then decided to make up recipes from memory. Should have checked the reviews before we walked in -- only afterwards did we see that others had suffered through similar experiences in this place.

An after dinner walk along the canal quickly erased thoughts of the poor meal, and a cigar quickly took care of any residual taste. As we sat by the water and enjoyed the day's end we called Mom to share the evening with her as best we could. I think she would have gotten a real laugh out of the sculpture of an old man standing on one leg whose head had been replaced by a pyramid. Is it a metaphor for something? I have no idea!