Sweden 2016 - Part I - From Stockholm to Dalsland

I started to write this post about 16 months ago. I was pregnant and thought I should probably catch up on blog posts befor the baby would turn our life upside down. Unfortunately, I was writing too slow and the baby came and everything changed and... oh well. Here we are, more than a year and two trips with our little one later, and I finally want to publish the text. I hope you enjoy it, even if the photos are two years old by now! We had a wonderful time in Sweden and will certainly return one day to show little Gu some of the places we visited back when he still was only a thought and a spark in our hearts.


After our camping bliss in France in 2015, we absolutely wanted to go camping again in summer, but this time it had to be Scandinavia. We both love the nordic countries and it didn't take long to figure out what we wanted to do in our 2016 summer holidays: a road trip in Sweden, east and west coast, and the big lakes, south and west of Stockholm. We also wanted to do a four-day tour with kayaks on one of the lakes. So after a few weeks of planning and researching, we decided to start our holidays in Stockholm, drive west towards Dalsland where the kayaking should happen, then down the west coast and over to the east coast again, before returning to Stockholm after two weeks.

After landing in Stockholm Arlanda, we went to pick up our car and drove west. We didn't know where we would sleep that night. When we saw the signs for Bredsand Camping, we knew immediately that we would have a wonderful time there. The campsite is situated at lake Mälaren, surrounded by forest - it's a beautiful place. 

We spent most of the next day on the road, headed west. We had lunch in Örebro and strolled around the city centre for a while, enjoying the art objects and street art, marvelled at the castle and visited Wadköping with its beautiful buildings, painted in red, just the way I imagined old swedish houses. 

One more time we succeeded in finding a great campsite at a lake: Nordic Camping Mörudden, situated at lake Vänern close to Karlstad. We loved it! In the evening, we walked along the shore and enjoyed the sunset. 

Before driving west again, towards Dalsland, we visited Karlstad. The weather was not really nice so we didn't take many photos, but I remember this incredible bridge. Unfortunately, it's not allowed to cross it by foot, we would've loved to do that.

I still remember the evening we arrived in Bengtsfors. If you like scandinavian cinema, you probably know "Show me love" - the swedish original is called "Fucking Åmål", and in German it's "Raus aus Åmål", escaping from Åmål. So we got lost on our way to Bengtsfors, ended up in Åmål and just wanted to escape from there, laughed about our shared memories of the film (we were 16 in 1998, didn't know each other yet but both of us loved going to the cinema) until we finally arrived in Bengtsfors. The campsite, Dalslands camping, is a wonderful place. We didn't have much time to enjoy the evening though, we had to prepare our kayak adventure. More to come! (and I promise not to wait another two years...)