I've always thought Sweden would be quite cool to visit, but didn't truly know what to expect. I'd been to Oslo once before and albeit lovely, that was very expensive.

I chose Gothenburg because the flights worked for the free days I had. As I keep saying, sometimes that's all the reason you need

The Flights

I flew from Stansted as the flights were A) £50 return, and B) had great flight times. 0730 outbound meant I landed in Gothenburg for about 1030 local time.

From Gothenburg airport its about a 30 minute coach into the city centre. Tip here though, the more frequent Vy Flybussgarna is about 130 Swedish Kroner (SEK), whereas the Flixbus is only 79 SEK, so I'd say get the Flixbus like I did and save yourself some money.

The flight time coming back was 1830, so we landed about 1930 local. Again, lovely time to fly.

The Accom

I scouted around and eventually managed to find a shteal of a room - one in the Elite Park Avenue Hotel. Both this and Hotel Poseidon just down the road were about £100 each for a room for 2 people for 2 nights. Both had free breakfast, but Elite Park Avenue had a gym, sauna, steam-room and little dipping pool too. So it was actually a pretty easy call to make. The place was lovely, one of those where I almost expected them to limit my access to certain parts of the hotel given I only paid £50 per night for the privelege. For that price' I'd come again tomorrow (even if just for the unreal breakfast bacon)

The front of Elite Park Avenue Hotel (fancy fancy! Is this New York or something?)

The hotel bar

The room

View from the room

The dipping pool (normal temperature and surprisingly fun!)

The sauna

A f*cking WAFFLE MAKER at breakfast!!

Breakfast was unlimited

With some of the BEST bacon I've ever had in a hotel. I'd come back and stay again just for this

Gothenburg Itself

As I mentioned, I only decided to come to Gothenburg because it was the place where the flights worked best for the dates I had. I had zero idea of what to expect from the place, other than the fact that I'd always wanted to visit Sweden.

Turns out, Gothenburg is a lovely city! Lots of green space, cafe's, and lots of Pubs (weirdly, specifically English pubs). Apparently this pub culture comes from the English sailors who ended up here a lot in the 1700's, to the extent now where pubs here often import traditional English oak for their bars. Cool! And lovely to see a pub culture (because that means beer. And beer is good).

There are also a fair few funky buildings to see, including the biggest f*cking sweet shop I have ever seen in my life. Like, ENORMOUS enormous. I only came in by chance too, so was a mad shock to be greeted with that sight. ALSO, answer me these two things. 1) why do maccas abroad always have funkier scran? And 2) can someone tell me why Swedish beer cans have such cool designs!?

Vasakyrkan Church

Vasakyrkan Church at night (if you didn't guess that)

4-Gott Östra Hamngatan, the biggest sweet shop I've ever seen

Not kidding!!

Kungsparken

How cool are there?!

John Scott's Avenyn (chain pub)

Funky maccies food 🥲

In Summary

I could write a lot more about Gothenburg (and probably will amend this all in future to include some), but the simple fact is this: was this better than staying at home? Answer, yes.

Cool city, lovely hotel at a great rate, nice flight times, new people met, new beers tried and above all just a very nice time. All in, worth every penny of the £155 for flights and accom.

This is what I keep banging on about. Travel and trips don't have to be perfect or full of 'wanderlust' (don't let travel instagram fool you). If you get a good enough price for good enough quality, it just has to be better than staying home. If you have a nice time, its worth it. The end.

If you want to do see and do stuff like this have a look inside the club with a free trial to see what being a member is all about 💛