Wander & Nest

We are so lucky that we got to see our friends, the McMahon’s, one more time during this sabbatical year. Their sabbatical year is also coming to a close soon, but somehow we found dates that worked for both families for a visit. They arrived in Gothenburg after midnight due to flight cancellations and delays (this really seems to be the norm now!), but we still had a few solid days to hang out! They took Mara’s room, each person in a bunk and Mara got to sleep with us for a few nights.

Mara was asleep when they arrived so she got a big surprise in the morning! Jay was up first and when Mara saw him she looked in a little bit of disbelief and said “are you Uncle Jay?” She quickly figured out that if Jay was here that meant that Sarah, Finn, and Maggie were too.

Jay and Wylie both had to work on their first full day, so Sarah and I took the kids to Slottskogen park. I had been looking forward to taking them there since my first visit to the park. It was no surprise that they had a blast! Maggie and Finn climbed the hill to ride down the massive slide several times. After some play, we walked through the park, past the seals, penguins, and various duck-like animals before having lunch at one of the cafes in the park. We took ice cream to go and the kids played at the natural playground. Mara was having a great time climbing and jumping off rocks and stumps. We took a nice walk back then took some downtime at home in the afternoon.

The adults got to out to dinner, thanks to Maggie for babysitting and putting Mara to bed while we were out. We went to one of the restaurants that has been on our list and it’s just at the base of our building. It’s so cool being literally steps away from so many restaurants. Before we left, we decided what food to order for the kids by looking out at the windows at all of the visible options – Thai, Indian, burgers, pasta, Greek, noodles, pizza, sandwiches… literally all visible from our windows!

It was so nice to hang out with Jay and Sarah again, we had an amazing dinner, drinks, and lots of laughs.

The next day was our family adventure day to the archipelago. We decided to go back to Styrsö since it was so accessible and easy. We took the tram to the ferry, with a quick stop for strawberries while we waited for the ferry. We had lunch at the other of the two restaurants on the island (so now we’ve experienced all of the cuisine on the island) and the kids played at the amazing playground while we waited for food. After lunch we were torn between walking around the island or just going straight to a swim spot, but the forecast was showing rain coming so we opted for the beach first. We found another small sandy beach and the kids wasted no time getting into the water and playing on the sand with borrowed and improvised beach toys.

The weather started to turn so we headed in for, you guessed it, more ice cream. the ice cream consumption in Sweden in the summer is remarkable. One of my absolute favorite this is just seeing full grown adult get ice cream by themselves. Since people seem to be in vacation mode on Styrsö, the typical order seemed to be a coffee, an ice cream, and a beer.

We headed back and again the adults got to go out for dinner, then had drinks and laughs at home before turning in.

For their last day in Gothenburg we really tried to cram a ton in, and somehow managed to do it all. We took them to one of our other favorite places, the world culture museum. They’re a big game family so I knew they would love the world of games exhibit. We had lunch there at their great lunch buffet and hit another exhibit, the one Mara calls the “kids place.” She was so excited to be at one of her favorite places with some of her favorite people in Maggie and Finn.

We had a few hours after the museum before they had to leave for the airport so we made the most of time by splitting up. Wylie had to go to some meetings at work, Jay and Finn went back to Slottskogen to ride the giant slide (since Jay didn’t get to see it on day 1) and Mara and I went with Sarah and Maggie to Haga for some shopping. Mara enjoyed her strollie snacks while they went inside the tiny shops.

Then came time for another teary goodbye. We don’t have our next visit planned yet with McMahon’s, which feels so strange but no doubt we’ll see them again soon. The only thing we don’t know is what continent it will be on 🙂