I wasn’t having a great week at work last week, and just wanted to get away for the weekend. The British Airways website has some great deals on it, and for £154 they were offering two nights and a flight to Göteborg. I have been to Sweden before, in 2010, visiting Stockholm and loving the food, landscape, people and, most importantly, the style of Sweden.
So, a couple of days after booking it, we took off from Heathrow and two hours later landed in Göteborg.
Where we stayed: Scandic Europa. The price included a great Swedish breakfast- I ate yogurt. Every flavour. All together. (Swedish yogurt is so good!) It’s located opposite the station, making it perfect to get to from the bus station. You can easily get from the airport into the city centre using the Flygbussarna for around 200 SEK. The hotel was great- conveniently located, and clearly one of the places to be in the evening: both Friday and Saturday night the bar and restaurant were packed!
On the first night that we were there, we headed out for dinner at Tranquilo, a Brazilian restaurant and apparently, I discovered on arrival, where the beautiful people of Göteborg go for dinner on a Friday night. The bar and wait staff were attractive, stylish and edgy, and mixed delicious Raspberry and Classic mojitos for us. For starters there was Pan Asado and Spicy Sausage, and for mains amazing short rib with chipotle and patatas bravas. Not necessarily traditional Swedish fayre, but delicious nonetheless. We walked back through the city for more drinks and some great music before retiring to bed.
The next day, after breakfast, we headed out to explore Göteborg. Starting with the main part of town, my first shop stop resulted in a purchase. Monki is a Swedish brand that you can actually purchase on asos.com in the UK here. The store is kind of trippy- an optical illusion of mirrors and Perspex stairs- but I purchased a grey cardigan here. I love their stuff- it’s fairly modest (important to me), yet stylish and affordable.
We continued to walk through the city, stopping at all the beautiful shops along the way. It was fairly quiet late morning. The shops are beautifully designed, the windows perfectly set and the store staff welcome you with a cheerful “hej hej” when you enter. We walked down Södra Larmgatan, where we looked in Tiger of Sweden (I purchased this supersoft sweatshirt from their jeans range) and resisted this bag. Hope and this great store called STUK Manufaktur. Here I discovered PAP leather, a Swedish leather goods company, and nearly succumbed to the most beautiful BLK DNM silk scarf (photographed here on another blog) I resisted though- just. I won’t lie. I was simultaneously combing through eBay for one on sale for less than the 1199 SEK price tag!
We grabbed some Fika (coffee and cake) at Di Matteo, and then walked through this small alleyway, discovering a store called Granit.
This store is everything I want my home to be, and I went a bit crazy. I bought this great little desk calendar as well as some black note cards, white printing ink, pencils and pens and a typography stamp set. I also bought this little tear off shopping list.
We returned the next day and actually purchased two of these copper coat rails, which work with S hooks. The coats have been homeless since the shoe cubby was installed, so this will hopefully give them a new home!
On the same street we visited the Nudie Jeans Repair Shop- a great concept where people return their jeans in return for a discount off their next pair. The jeans are then repaired and sold. Matt got a pair of the mended Nudies for 500 SEK along with a belt.
After this, we visited a couple of other beautiful home stores, one called Artilleriet which was packed full of people and classic Swedish design. This chair was amazing. Too big to carry back, unfortunately!
We also visited a great store called Grandpa which sold clothes and home stuff. This is where Matt discovered one of his new “wants”, Gram shoes (“sophisticated sneakers”) and I just wanted to look at all the Sandqvist bags. Decisions, decisions on the bag investment front.
We headed back towards the city for some lunch, and became engrossed in the game of shuffleboard that was happened next to us, then continued walking to the old town.
Here there were loads of antique stores and tiny cafes, stacked with cakes in the windows and reindeer skins on the chairs outside. We visited Market 29 where I bought two prints. Their Instagram can be found here and I bought the black and white bicycle print you can see in a few of their pics. We also grabbed more coffee in one of the little cafes before heading back for a bit of a disco nap.
So, Saturday night. It started at the Clarion Post Hotel, with some wine sat on a gold Chesterfield. There is some great people watching here, and you’re surrounded by a selection of beautiful books. Mostly in Swedish, but great to look at. We then headed over to where we had dinner: Koka. It was so amazing it deserves its own blog post. Prior to dinner we had drinks at BB which, it turns out, means Bjorns Bar, small and perfectly formed, we nestled in a corner before our epic dinner.
Following the dinner, we strolled back through the city for…yes…more alcohol and great music. I’ll post all the tracks from the weekend in Göteborg, as every store, bar and restaurant had music I would want to listen to. Shazam came in handy.
The next day, after yogurt, I was still a little bit ropey so grabbed a big coffee and finished off the shopping. We grabbed lunch opposite the Saluhallen Market Hall, which we had visited the day before. It’s like the Oxford Covered Market, but cleaner, more stylish and more tempting. Great food stalls full of Swedish sweets, meat, fish and other delicacies.
We headed back to the airport around 4.30pm considerably poorer, with a good dose of Swedish style (home, fashion and music) and ready for the week ahead. I would definitely recommend a trip to Göteborg (if you have already been to Stockholm), but be warned: whilst the flights and hotel seem a bargain, shopping, drinking and eating costs money. I think it was worth it though!
Soundtrack to a weekend in Göteborg
The More I Want- Original Mix, Larse
It’s Yours- feat. E-Man, Jon Cutler
3am (Original Mix), Bobby Blanco
Bump and Hustle Music, Tommy Stewart
Jah Music feat. Blue Eyez, 7 Samurai
Nothing Better Than Music, Deadly Sins
Uncover, Zara Larsson
Fade Out Lines- Chopstick & Johnjon Remix, The Avener
Lean On (feat. Mo & DJ Snake), Major Lazer, DJ Snake
Are You With Me- Radio Edit, Lost Frequencies
Walk, Kwabs
Teach Me, Bakermat
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