We arrived in the morning in Gothenburg, Sweden. We docked right next to the Volvo Museum in Arendal, a former ship-building suburb of Gothenburg.
We had arranged an excursion for the four of us, but Oscar and Joann went down to the meeting point at 7:30 and ended up being directed to the wrong tour. We arrived at 7:45 as instructed and got the correct tour. My hat blew off on the way to the bus - it was really foggy and windy.
The bus with our knowledgeable guide took us to a ferry where we rode to the island of Hönö.
From there we drove across a small bridge to the island of Ökerö, then another small bridge to Hälsö where we drove up to another ferry terminal. After some consultation, I think the driver and guide decided there was not much point in taking the next ferry - there is another island with a lot of birds and heather that was usually part of the tour, but between the weather being gloomy, rainy, and windy, and the heather having turned brown for the fall, they decided to skip that part of the tour, so we turned around and went to visit an old church on Ökerö.
The church was built in the 14th century from stone to replace a 13th century church built of wood. There are a few items from the original wooden church still being used, such as a baptismal fount and a crucifix.
It is surrounded by a cemetery with a style different to what I have seen elsewhere.
Across the street is an interpretive center featuring a number of old wooden buildings preserved from different locations on this and the surrounding islands, some decorated with furnishings from hundreds of years ago, some serving as mini-museums, and others simply warehousing accumulations of old items.
They also had some chickens that I thought were very good looking.
In the main building we sat and had a little coffee, tea, and cookie break. We sat across from a couple from Ontario and had some interesting discussions. Then we had twenty or thirty minutes to wander the various buildings. They had a room of old radios, and I thought the tuning setup on this one was interesting because it effectively had a bunch of different stations “pre-programmed”.
They also had a room of old classroom and school-related stuff.
A tall rock amidst the buildings had stairs leading up where you could get a view around. The clouds had lifted somewhat, but the wind was still strong.
We loaded back into the bus and drove to the south end of Hönö. After all this driving, and explanation by the guide prompted by other passengers, I finally correlated the road signs I was seeing to the names our guide mentioned. The umlaut-o (ö) character is one of three “extra vowels” in the Swedish alphabet, and is pronounced kind of like “uh” but a little bit like “ew”. An “ö” at the end of a name means “island” or “isle”, so Hönö (Huh-nuh) is effectively “Hön island” and Ökerö (“Uhkeruh”) is “Öker island”.
At this southern tip of the island we walked past a boat museum to see an unusual building. Unfortunately the wind was now blowing a fairly heavy rain at an angle, but the museum looked interesting, with an old ship emerging out of the building and the back half as an exhibit inside.
Then we drove over a nice arching bridge to Fotö. The view from the top of the bridge was supposed to be a featured viewpoint of the tour, but we saw mostly clouds and fog through the raindrops on the windows. We drove back across, then took the ferry back to what felt like the mainland, but is technically just a much larger island between branches of the Gota river. We drove past the Volvo passenger vehicle assembly plant and then took a driving tour of Gothenburg. We got out for a brief photo stop at a square surrounded by the concert hall, an art museum, a movie theater, and the public library
Then we drove past some sports stadiums, an amusement park, and a conference/event center with a huge hotel. Finally we stopped in the middle of the old town and went into the city hall, mostly to use it as a bathroom stop. We walked behind that building to a small square with a very old military building.
Then we had about an hour to wander on our own. Julie and I found a chocolate shop and picked up some Christmas gifts plus a few for ourselves. Then we walked out to the river where a number of old ships are moored, including the world’s oldest all-welded steel ship.
There were some unusual-looking houseboats as well.
Once we arrived back at our ship we were greeted by a towel frog on the bed.
We were quite hungry so we had a pizza as an afternoon snack. Afterwards we caught up on email and news a bit and Julie took a nap. Then we had dinner in the main dining room. The ship got underway during dinner and it was quite an operation. There is very little space to maneuver between the pier and some nearby rocks, and we got much closer to some marking buoys than I had seen this large ship get before.
After dinner the main stage offered a BBC wildlife show accompanied by some live music. Afterwards everyone was fairly tired and ready for bed.