On Saturday, May 12, we drove just 100 miles or so to the Bohuslan Coast. It is Sweden’s west coast—or the best coast as the locals like to say. This coastline runs only 160km, from Gothenburg to the Norwegian border. It is a coastline rimmed with cliffs and huge boulders and 8,000 islands and skerries—all of pink granite.
We stayed 2 nights in Lysekil (pronounced loo-suh-sheel), which is at the end of a peninsula about halfway up the coast. When we arrived, there was almost a carny atmosphere. It turned out to be a holiday weekend. Add to that the warm temperatures and the fact Scandinavia had had a very late start to spring this year, and you get the idea.
People were all over the waterfront. There was an incredibly busy helicopter giving (selling) 5-minute rides around the area. There were numerous tents or booths where you could get information—or I’m sure they would prefer you buy—anything and everything connected to boating, diving, and fishing. And, of course, there were places selling ice cream and seafood.
We checked into our hotel, the Strandflickorna, and hauled our bags up the usual couple flights of stairs. Ignoring the whole stairs thing, which has gotten a bit old, we may this time have found the fly in the ointment of the whole historic hotel routine. Our room was the smallest we have ever had. It was barely big enough to hold two twin beds. There was a very small bathroom, but that was about it aside from those two beds. We had to stop and think before moving and had to negotiate who could do what, when.
Cute hotel, set amongst pink granite boulders. Pretty breakfast room/restaurant. Tiny bedroom.
This was the whole room. Turn around, and you could see the bathroom door; otherwise, this was it.
We quickly headed out and walked to the harborfront. We walked out on the quay and on a dock or two to see the boats, a number of which were for sale as part of the festival or market.
A pretty harborfront restaurant. Swedish architecture with its gingerbread trim, known as snickargladje or carpenter’s joy.
A view of the harbor.
We watched the helicopter flying in and out. Coming and going repeatedly, the helicopter was never on the ground longer than about a minute and a half.
Here it comes.
It’s on the ground.
Lift off.
And it’s gone again.
We walked to the top of the hill to visit the church that presides over the town. Ah, but apparently it is closed on Saturdays. That didn’t seem very welcoming.
So we found a different route down the hill through a neighborhood and made our way back to the hotel. We took advantage of the beautiful weather and one of the hotel’s many outdoor seating spots until it was time to go to dinner.
We ate at a very modern, open-kitchen restaurant on the Norra Hamnen, or North Harbor.
Their menu was all about seafood, so we shared an order of fresh shrimp. It’s a messy job, peeling and eating these tasty morsels, but someone had to do it. In fact, we got their last order of the day and felt pretty lucky. They are bigger than our little Oregon shrimp. They’re much smaller than even the smallest prawns but have a prawn-like texture. I love all things shrimp, so I was a pretty happy camper.
Our table overlooked a boat harbor, and we got to watch dusk settle in and a lovely sunset.
On Sunday, we drove to Fjallbacka, several peninsulas north. It is a much smaller town, and we were instantly smitten. It leans a little toward boating chic, but it was such a pretty setting we decided to forgive it for that. A little island just offshore a ways was Ingrid Bergman’s summer home from 1958 until her death in 1982.
The town sits at the foot of Vetteberget, a high granite cliff. This picture shows the main square, named for Ingrid Bergman.
Here, too, we walked through the town and along the waterfront, watching all the people and boats.
As we returned to Lysekil, there was a steady stream of cars leaving the peninsula. Coming from Puget Sound country, seeing such a line of cars is when we would say, “Looks like the ferry just got in.” In this case, however, I guess it was just the end of a long weekend with only one road for coming and going.
With the town now much quieter, we decided to do something totally silly and totally us: We played 18 holes of mini golf. Some years ago, Jerry and I had plotted a strategy for publishing a guide with ratings of mini golf courses. We had played some fabulous, championship-quality courses, and we had played some courses where you had to clear away weeds to find your way to the holes. We decided a rating guide was in order. Since practically all mini golf courses have a windmill hole and because Jerry is half Dutch, our rating system would be windmills, not stars. A 5-windmill course would be the top of the line. We talked about this off and on for a number of years, and now it has simply become a bit of an inside joke to us. But when we saw this course not more than a 5-minute walk from our hotel, what could we do? A chance to play mini golf in Sweden? Yes!
It looked so easy, not really up to our standards. Either we are really out of mini golf fighting trim (the highly likely answer), or it really was that hard. It has been awhile….
Of course we saw this area on a holiday weekend, but we can only imagine how busy it gets during the height of summer. Many shops and restaurants were not yet open for the season. People would apologize for things that weren’t available or weren’t working smoothly and tell us they had just opened. The season is short and intense—essentially mid-June through August. (Sounds just like the Oregon coast, which is truly busy only from the Fourth of July to Labor Day.)
This was an area that deserved to be both explored and lingered in, and we hadn’t allowed sufficient time for that—always the danger in planning a trip and booking hotels ahead. If I were to pick one place in Sweden to which to return, it would be Fjallbacka and the Bohuslan Coast.
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