Our Last Leg of Adventure: Malmö

After our couple of days refueling in Taby we set off with Kathy and Louis for the last chapter of our Swedish adventure. An extra treat was to meetup with our niece, Kayla, who was starting her post-graduation (from UC Santa Cruz) travels. Kayla will be traveling to a number of Nordic countries as well as in Europe, and the few days with us came at the earliest part of a two month journey. She’d gone to Lund (university in Sweden) for a semester abroad and was anxious to revist, so we decided to both see Malmö and have Kayla tour us around Lund which is close by.

I have to share a couple of funny signs outside a pub we passed in Stockholm near the southern train station we needed to catch our train from…I wonder – is this Swedish or Irish sense of humor???

The train ride from Stockholm to Malmö is five hours – but the train was lovely. Somehow we ended up in first class (apparently not much more expensive than economy) and the time passed quickly, all of us reading and I got to catch up on this blog!

Malmö is a coastal city in southern Sweden. It lies at the eastern end of the Öresund Bridge, a long road and railway bridge–tunnel running to Copenhagen, Denmark. In the city center, Lilla Torg is a cobblestone square with cafes, half-timbered houses and shops selling local handicrafts. Malmö Castle, a 16th-century fortress built by King Christian III of Denmark, houses nature, history and art exhibits. We visited this fortress at the end of our stay – more on that later.

The Airbnb we stayed in turned out to be lovely and very well-located…walking distance from the train station and equally close to the all the historic sites of the Gamla Stan (old town). Our niece showed up a few hours after us and it was a great reunion. She had spent a couple of days running around with a friend – also traveling – touring her through Lund and Copenhagen, so she had already clocked around 20 miles of walking that day! We did manage to all rally and head to a great, upscale food court that had been recommended called Malmö Saluhall – great suggestion! The spicy hand-pulled, vegan noodle dish was a real hit for me, and we got chatting with one of the stall owners who took a shine to us as we sat next to her and some of her chums. We have found Swedes in general to be very friendly, helpful, and – contrary to what we’d been told – chatty (in a good way). All along we have struck up some great conversations with locals and all have been open and forthcoming with tales of their life in Sweden and curious about why we chose to come here to visit. Political conversations have been sympathetic – I will just leave it at that for now.