Gothenburg, Sweden: West Coast Seafood, Canal City, and Nordic Museum Culture

The Gothenburg Museum of Art on Götaplatsen holds the strongest collection of Nordic painting outside Stockholm's Nationalmuseum: Edvard Munch, Carl Larsson, Ernst Josephson, and Anders Zorn are represented with depth, and the French Impressionist collection (Monet, Cézanne, Picasso) was purchased with industrial fortunes in the early twentieth century when the prices were reasonable. The Rembrandt and Rubens in the old masters section are secondary to the reason most people come, which is the Scandinavian painting of the National Romantic period, but they are significant works.

The Haga district, immediately south of the city center, is the oldest preserved working-class neighborhood in Gothenburg: wooden two-story buildings with ground-floor shops, cobblestone streets, and a density of independent cafés, vintage shops, and food producers that attracts the kind of visitor who prefers to wander rather than be guided. The Haga bullar (giant cinnamon buns, approximately the size of a medium pizza) sold at the Café Husaren are an irony-free local institution. The covered Saluhallen food market at the northern edge of Haga has excellent fishmongers, cheese vendors, and charcuterie.

Liseberg, Sweden's most-visited amusement park, is across the canal from the city center and is worth noting even for non-amusement-park travelers because the park is genuinely well-designed, the rides are extreme by any standard (Helix, the launched coaster, regularly appears on European top-10 lists), and the food served inside is markedly better than at most theme parks — the Swedish hot dog with shrimp salad is specific to Liseberg and genuinely worth eating.

The Gothenburg archipelago, accessible by Styrsöbolaget ferries from the Saltholmen terminal (reached by tram from the city center), consists of thirty inhabited islands and hundreds of uninhabited ones stretching into the Kattegat. The largest, Styrsö, Donsö, and Vrångö, have no cars and are walkable in a morning; the coastline is smooth granite worn by the last ice age, the coves are swimmable in summer, and the silence is specific to the Swedish west coast in a way that the Oslo Fjord and Danish islands are not. Day trips from Gothenburg to the outer islands and back are standard.

West coast seafood is the reason serious food travelers visit Gothenburg: räksmörgås (open-faced shrimp sandwich with mayonnaise and dill, the canonical version), oysters from the Grebbestad beds north of the city, freshly boiled lobster from September through April (the season is strictly enforced), and the small brown shrimp (räkor) that are traditionally cooked on the boat and eaten cold with butter and bread. Sjömagasinet on the waterfront is the most famous Swedish seafood restaurant; the Feskekôrka (fish church), the nineteenth-century fish market building, has everything fresher and cheaper.