Gothenburg, a back breaking day

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The flight into Gothenburg is full of beautiful views of trees and the inlets of sea that dot the Swedish coastline. Taking the airport but to the central train station I cross the road to my hotel and leave my suitcase as I can’t check in for a few hours. I walked up through the main square with all the trams and began walking by the main canal which goes through the shopping district. I remember much of this from the brief visit I made a few years ago. After stretching my legs I picked up the hop on hop off tourist bus which took me to lots of new areas that I didn’t get to see before including the theatre and cultural district and up to the Gotha Towers hotel which is this spectacular glass skyscraper. The oddest thing is that in the middle of the second biggest city in Sweden they have a huge theme park and dinosaur exhibition. A huge big wheel, roller coasters and so on sit side by side with enormous fibre glass diplodocus (what’s the plural? Diplodoci?????) ..Very odd indeed. Gothenburg is a city which is rather lacking in nice architecture, most of the buildings have a nasty late 1960’s feel to them and you do get the feeling the city itself is rather in a time warp. Part of the bus ticket was the opportunity to take a boat trip. Beautiful wide open boat that was rather hazardous to get on to as there are no railings or steps down… you just walk across the front of the boat and hope you don’t fall in the water!!! Beautiful trip through lots of the canals and then out into the open water of the harbour. It used to be used for ship building but most of that is gone now and it’s only really used for occasional ship repairs. The harbour has a beautiful old sailing ship and some fabulous new flats that are under construction, bars and restaurants line the jetties so it is a very attractive waterfront. The only problem with getting out to the harbour was the low bridges that the boat had to go under, one of them is so low that you have to crouch on the floor of the boat to avoid hitting your head…. Not a good thing to discover when you have a bad back like mine! It could have all ended in decapitation if my back had decided to lock rather than allow me to lounge on the floor of the boat like a stranded seal! The most annoying thing about Gothenburg is the system for getting a ticket for the tram…. You can’t pay cash on it; you have to pay by credit card for a ticket worth around £2. Insane!

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