Travel days: Gothenburg

I only got about six hours to explore Gothenburg and I wasted many of these eating.

I say wasted. I regret nothing.

A local porter

The food was fantastic; a salad sandwich and coffee for lunch, a vegetable stew and local beer for dinner. And after paying Norwegian prices for a couple of weeks, the cost was very low.

Also, all you can eat

Gothenburg itself was very nice, a lot of brick buildings, cobbled streets, canals and bicycle lanes. I forgot my camera on my first outing, so all my photos come from the evening and are of the old town, where I went for dinner. It's also why I don't have a photo of the enormous cookie I had after lunch. Thank goodness.

Stone!

And of course, all of this in the shadow of a castle.

A change of scenery

"This will be my first night train," I said to Bjorn, who was sharing my cabin.
"That's strange," he said. "Why?"
"We don't have them in Australia."
"Oh, I see. I've been making this trip now maybe thirty, maybe forty times. It has become very boring. Where are you going?"
"Trondheim."
He whistled. "Long trip. Been to Norway before?"
"No,"
"You will like it, I think."

Sweden from the train window. Very pretty.

We reached his stop a little after five in the morning. I spent the rest of the trip to Storlien snoozing and taking photos from the window of the train. The landscape did not change much as we travelled; nice houses on the edge of lakes and rivers, all very flat.

Lots of trees, also

Storlien itself was deserted; a ski town closed for the summer. The train to Trondheim took us to the border. The change was stunning.

Norway: not so flat

My supervisor had told me that the trip down the fjord into Trondheim was one of the best train journeys he had ever taken. It was easy to see why. The train followed a fast-flowing stream all the way down to the fjord. Mountains rose and fell away on either side. Small communities were built into the pockets of flat land against the slopes, between the water and the stone.

I hadn't slept well on the train and crashed a little when I reached the city. But the sun stayed up a long time, so there was still opportunity to explore.

This photo was taken just after 9pm

I found a lovely spot for dinner and tried a local specialty; fish soup.

It tasted exactly as good as it looks.