Thursday May 31st

Unfortunately we didn’t sleep well. We think it was our lack of hiking 13 miles a day since yesterday we only did a few miles. We were up at 8am to enjoy our free Swedish breakfast of crepe-like pancakes, burnt bacon (our favorite) and eggs. Our Volvo chauffeur arrived promptly at 9:30am to take us to the factory for our car pick up and tour.

Let me tell you, you think you see a lot of Volvos in the US, you haven’t seen anything until you have come to Gotenburg, Sweden. I would say @ 75% of the cars on the road were Volvos. We saw a ton of our car, the V50, which we have only seen 2 of in the US so far.

The Volvo Overseas Delivery Center was very impressive. We checked in and enjoyed some yummy Swedish hot chocolate. They brought our car out into this showroom and our Volvo expert showed us all the features on our new car. We love it – the color and everything. Just one regret – we should have gotten the sport package but hey, what can you do. They let us drive the car off the lot and told us to take a spin on the test lap. We were expecting a lap the size of a racecourse but it was a lap the size of Grapevine Trail J

After taking pictures and exploring our car, we went to the Volvo cafeteria which served a traditional lunch of Swedish meatballs and potato balls with a crème sauce and kronberries. We enjoyed lunch w/ our old friends Fred and Joanne along with a new guy, Jeremy – an American government contractor working in Holland. If any of you are in the military that is the way to go. He is able to buy his Volvo and keep it Europe until he is done with work. No 6 month limit like they do in the Overseas Delivery Program.

After lunch we boarded the Volvo train for the factory tour. This was pretty entertaining to see how our car was built. They only actually make some of the models in that factory so we didn’t see our car being built but we saw the XC90, which is actually their most popular car. Surprisingly too, the US sells more Volvos then Sweden.

After our tour we were off on our own, just our new TomTom, Volvo and the open Swedish roads. We were fine with directions until we got close to the city center. We were a scene out of the Griswold European Vacation. Look kids, its Big Ben and Parliament. We probably did about 15 loops and u-turns. It didn’t help that we had to cross a river which we did a few too many times. By the time we got back to our hotel and tried to park and realized that was SO expensive, we got scared with all the traffic and just valet parked it at our hotel and decided to take a nap after our sleepless night and stressful driving experience J

We had a great walk around the city of Gotenburg before dinner. All of the shops closed at 5pm but we got some great people watching. We ate dinner at what Jim claimed would be his ‘favorite meal’ of the trip at a place translated to The Cellar. We had traditional Swedish meals – Jim venison with kronberries and potatoes and Carla beef with potatoes. Swedish beers – nothing to write home about!