July 4 - Goteborg

Goteborg, 4th of July

Today we bid farewell to all the family in Hamburg and set out by car for Sweden.


We drove first to Puttgarden, at the northmost tip of Germany, and drove aboard a ferry for Denmark.






We had company.




Then we drove through Denmark past Copenhagen, took another brief ferry trip from Denmark to Sweden, and headed up the coast to Goteborg. Goteborg is the "cradle of Sweden," although it was first settled by the Dutch in the 16th century. It's a major port for Scandinavia (lots of IKEA shipments, for one thing). Our hotel is a retired cruise ship at anchor in Goteborg Harbor.



Here's the view from our room window at 5:30 am.



In the evening we walked through the downtown area.
The "signature building" for Goteborg is an office building referred to by the locals as the "lipstick building."






Downtown is a beautiful, if a little frayed, example of northern European elegance -- complete with the requisite graffiti.
This morning (now July 5 here) at 6 am we had too much of the enormous smorgasbord breakfast onboard the hotel/ship.

Now for today. Explore Goteborg, or go look for ancestors in neighboring Boras? Time will tell.