What the fuck is on my pizza dude...

Morning breakfast consisted of the more of the same. Fresh sourdough bread with butter, cheese, coffee, and juice. Breakfasts in Sweden tend to be simple like that. Afterwards, I wandered down to the bus stop to ride into Gothenburg (I'll use the English names for things as its a pain in the ass to constantly pop up the character map). The bus trip into town was quite a bit. Maybe a little less than a Max ride into Portland.

The first thing I did was make my way over to the place where they have tourist boat cruises. Unfortunately I had just missed the one at 1130, so I was stuck having to come by at 1230. This gave me time to wander around some of the streets. One cool thing they have in Sweden are these large covered markets (usually called fish markets but they have all sorts of things. Its very common for folks to have lunch or such there while picking up some cool tasty treats for the homestead. So there are some cool coffee shops and different food areas inside.

I got back for the canal trip after a quick walkabout through the market. They use special canal boats, but the water was so high that we had to take an alternate route or the boat wouldn't go under the bridges. It was still pretty cool. They have a series of parks lining the canals with artwork and native trees spread throughout the parks.

The bridge in the canals were made so that they could be turned sideways to allow boats through, but this practice died out very quickly. The gearing was still in place though they now had it attached to an electric motor instead of making a half dozen Swedes turn the thing. The canals ended up in the industrial area after a trip under "the hairdresser". A bridge so low that we had to get out of our seats and sit/lie on the floor in order for our heads to clear. This took us out the major canals with ship repair industry, cruise and cargo ships, ferries, and notable other areas. One building was were the immigrants going to America would travel to that contained a gambling casino. This would make a number of the immigrants too broke to leave Sweden in the first place.

The tour was cool but pretty short to I heading down into town to check out some of the areas. The first I ventured into was the Haga district. It was originally a working district with wooden housing and such, but its now an area very similar to the Hawthorn district in Portland. A lot of hippy types, small tea shops, hand crafted items, cool little cafes, etc. I got some cool wooden items and a bar of nice smelling soap (I ran out of my Dr. Bronner's). I was tempted to eat at a small French cafe, but it didn't look like many folks spoke English and I couldn't figure out the menu. 

This place was really cool, but everything in it was for women. Cest la vie.

I walked past Haga into the apparently "seedy" part of Gothenburg. I found the three strip clubs/sex shops/sex cinemas alongside some tasty looking Thai and Indian holes in the wall. I ignored it but made a mental note to check it out on the way back. It didn't seem like there was much else in the streets around the area, just residential and the main street by the canal. I found a cool looking church on a hill, but when I got to the top of the hill - the city view sucked and not much was there. So I headed back on down.

The trip back down included a stop over to get some lunch. I was still unsure as to what I was hunkering for when I went by some place offering pizza pasta kebab. So i figured, what the hell. They offered a kebab meat pizza so I had to check it out. It consisted of kebab meat and fried onion with a tzaziki sauce. It was actually kinda tasty, but I doubt I would order one again. I'm pretty sure it would never catch on in the states either.

After a nice meal I headed to Wandas, the least sleazy of the three strip clubs in Gothenburg. It was still outrageously expensive. Roughly ten bucks to get in, beers for twelve bucks a pop, and a lap dance would set you back $75. I got one, but it was nothing special considering Portland's strip clubs. And this concludes my (apparently) strip club report from around the globe.

On the way back I kept getting a soaker and I was wondering why as my shoes weren't really that deep in the water. I looked at the bottom of my Timberlines and seen that there were a couple large cracks through the soles. Great. Though I did manage to call Craig, find the name of a store that could help, and found a clerk that knew English enough to get Sweden's equivalent to Shoe Goo. I'll see if I can find another Timberline shop and replace the shoe as I had gotten used to it and they were pretty comfy. I always carry two pairs of shoes just for this reason now. That and one is more for hiking between the hostels and sometimes the trek with a full backpack can be fairly long. Tomorrow, shoes and maybe the science museum or some such.