Gothenburg and Liseberg Christmas Market (9-11 December)

For our last weekend with Nathan, we decided to head up to Göteburg and the Liseberg Christmas markets.  We had previously headed up there last year between Christmas and New Year and remembered that there was a pretty cool Viking market in the park.

Because we didn't have enough seats in the car for us all to fit, we decided to take the snabbtag - Fast train.  The train traveled at around 130-150km and the trip took about two hours.

Once we arrived we had about an hour walk to the place we were staying.  Due to the size of our group, we stayed at a hostel, hiring out a room for us to share.

The first thing we saw was the Oskar Fredriks Church, a gothic church built in the 1890s:

Oskar Fredriks Church

Oskar Fredriks Church

Front of the church

We found it pretty funny that Nathan had travelled the whole way around the world and the picture in our room was of Sydney Harbour:

Homesick?

We also had a good view to the Skansen Kronan (Crown Sconce)  a tower built in 1698 and formerly outfitted with 23 guns.  The walls are 4-5m thick granite.  Despite the formidable defences, it was never attacked so the cannons were never fired.

Skansen Kronan

In Gothenburg, the streets were decorated for Christmas and there were a few small stalls, but the main markets were in Liseberg.

Decorations

Main street

We also came across the famous Bältespännarn sculpture, made in 1914, it shows two men bound by a belt and fighting with knives.

Bältespännarn - and as expected they are fighting over a woman

Cameron loved the name of the Hotel Eggers - Tom wondered if it was the headquarters of people who went around egging hotels

We also stopped at the train station where the kids got to try out some virtual reality headsets, either meeting the Swedish women's handball team or trying their luck at defending the goals:

Tom is ready and focused.

You know Alana is serious - the gloves have come off

It all ended when Alana smacked the instructor in the face:

We spent a full day at Liseberg and got back to the hostel late.  the next day we had a 5pm train but we were all tired and ready to go home.  Unfortunately, our tickets didn't let us change the time, so we either had to pay for a whole new set of tickets (about $300) or wait.  In the end we went for a walk and watched a loch being opening and visited a playground

There were dragon eggs in the park

This mannequin was sitting by a bar, Tomas was worried that it was hurt, so he made sure to pull its arm off completely.

We also found a botanic garden including a big greenhouse:

Greenhouse

Christmas decorations in the greenhouse

Traditional Swedish straw Christmas decorations

A few other random sights:

Cafe Prego would serve a more limited clientele in Australia

A tomte made with a potato a sack and some bushes

Looking out over Gothenburg at night

Christmas Lights

And now onwards to Liseberg:

We visited here last year and I took lots of photos and gave some details on the park so I'll try not to repeat too much (look back to December 2015 for the previous post):

The snowman was still lounging in the water out front

But Tom was upset that it didn't recognize him

We'd packed the kids ice skates and they were keen to start on the ice skating rink - they were a bit rusty but they got the hang of it pretty quickly:

Getting ready

Go!

There were plenty of stumbles and falls, but they all had fun:

Crash incoming

Ooof

Alana got some pace up

The push-along trainers helped quite a bit

But Nathan hadn't forgotten his skating skills

That's not how you're supposed to use it...

After we finished up, we went on a few rides and Cameron met the Kanin (rabbit) mascot for the park:

Cam's new friend

We spent some time checking out the markets and then headed back for the 4:30 showing of the Nutcracker on Ice.  By then it was starting to get pretty crowded:

I hate crowds..

Nutcracker on ice

By the time we got back to Malmo we were exhausted, but it was a good trip and we got some cool souveneirs from the markets.

Nathan had to head back to Australia the next week, but my in-laws (Peter and Heather) joined us again on the 23rd.