A couple of days ago we got back from a road trip through southern Sweden.

When I was a kid my family went on vacation somewhere in Sweden every summer, but Henrik and I have never really traveled in Sweden as grown ups, so I’ve been wanting to do this for a while. I wanted to go on a road trip to see many places, but we had to cut it down to just southern Sweden, and about 6 overnight stops.

Our first stop was Karlstad, where we saw this beautiful archway.

A really nice functionalist 30s or 40s building, but this photo doesn’t quite do it justice.

Great 30s display figure in a shop window.

I finally had a chance to visit the great vintage shop Tidens Melodi. Highly recommended! I bought the perfect fitting tailored suit jacket for a very reasonable price, and a wonderful green clear plastic belt.

Very cool peace statue in Karlstad.

Nice mid century bleacher building.

On the road again going south.

I tried to take photos of buildings as we drove by. I really liked this old factory building.

The landscape got flatter and flatter.

I like the shape of this mid century building, and the chimney.

The next day was spent at Nordens Ark, a zoo that breeds endangered species. I was surprised when the cashier at the entrance recognised me from my blog (hej om du läser det här!). This is an Amur tiger, also known as Siberian tiger.

It’s surreal seeing a tiger in the Swedish landscape like this. The enclosure was huge.

A more familiar animal, the wolverine. These cubs were crazy active and probably a bit too fond of showing off for the humans, they weren’t scared at all.

Probably my favourite animal of the day, Pallas’s cat. Google them, they are amazing.

Next morning, taking a walk in a field by our hostel for the night. We went to Göteborg after this, the second largest city in Sweden, but I don’t have any photos of that since we spent most of the day at amusement park Liseberg without a camera. You can see some of it on my Instagram.

Next activity was a hike in Kullaberg, a nature reserve on the west coast. There were lots of these nice bugs with metallic blue bellies.

Snack break.

Climbing a really, really steep and really, really tall stair/cliff.

Climbing up again.

We got our first good look at the ocean.

A very majestic bull.

A couple of days later we were in Österlen on the very southern tip of Sweden, on our way to the beach.

We had an absolutely wonderful day lazing and bathing at a fantastic beach. I’ve never really bathed in the ocean like this before with warm water and warm white sand.

In the evening we went to see Ale’s Stones, a very old mysterious stone monument.

The view on our way back to the car.

We spent the last night at a wonderful hostel at culture reserve Åsens by, “an example of what a Småland village looked like 100 years ago”. We had our own little cottage!

Swatting flies.

Our cottage.

The End! But there’ll be some more photos from our trip when I blog July’s instagram pictures.