Denmark to Sweden!

The first leg of our trip complete, it was time to move on to our second country of the trip: Sweden! 

But first, we had to get some fresh produce from this adorable stand, which was a chain in the area, selling only strawberries, snap peas, and potatoes. 

We took the Stena Line car ferry from Frederikshavn to Gothenberg. We arrived very early for check in and watched as over 100 cars/trucks disembarked from our boat. 

This was an intricate trip to plan, connecting travel to 3 countries, booking ferries, trains, flights, Airbnbs, and figuring out the best way to see the highlights in a certain amount of time (and always on a budget). It was some of my finest travel planning to date and I'm happy to report it all went off without a hitch! 

The ferry ride was around 3 1/2 hours. There was a kid area on board the boat with arcade games and a small climbing area, but our kids bored of that quickly. We sat outside of the duty free liquor store and were more entertained by the people leaving the shop with tolleys stacked high with cases of beer and wine. As we were disembarking, we saw all of those people waiting to leave the ship by foot. We think that the prices are so low compared to the cost of alcohol in Sweden that people take the ferry just to access the liquor store! 

Proof that the kids don't spend all of their time traveling on the ipads. 

Jude had a lot of questions about this boat and comparisons to the Titanic. I took him out to see the rescue boats to put his mind at ease. 

We went outside as the boat pulled into Gothenberg. We'd never been to the west coast of Sweden before and knew that our itinerary wasn't going to allow for time to explore this city, so we took in what we could see from the deck. 

We were one of the first cars onto the boat given that we arrived so early, so one would expect that would mean we would be one of the first boats off. Nope. We frustratingly sat through at least 45 minutes of waiting to disembark/traffic off the boat. We had one final ferry to catch before we arrived at our destination and just wanted to get there already! 

We had an hour drive to get to our final ferry, which takes just 3 minutes to cross over to the island of Lyr. We enjoyed the peaceful scenery while we waited for the boat which goes every 30 minutes. 

We were meeting our friends from Stockholm for four nights at a house they rented with two sets of their friends. We were a big group of 14 in a beautiful house overlooking the water. We took turns cooking meals and arrived to a delicious fish taco spread. We enjoyed meeting all of the new faces and catching up with our friends who we hadn't seen in 4 years! 

Our family stayed in the two bedroom boat house down on the water.