This is what the perfect road trip looks like
There are always things on your ‘someday-I-want-to-do’ list that usually get pushed forward. But before you know it, ‘someday’ becomes ‘never’ and life rushes by. So when Volvo asked us if we wanted to come up with something fun to get to know their fully electric Volvo EX40 better, Daan and I immediately shouted; a road trip through Sweden.
Driving through Swedish forests and lakes
Hours of driving along endless forests, a hundred and one red wooden cottages, and lakes where we would definitely take a dip. The idea that you can camp anywhere in the wild in Sweden, as long as you leave everything tidy behind, we find romantic, but we prefer to choose a comfortable hotel.
Start in Gothenburg: heart of Volvo
Because we love nature but secretly are city people too, we choose to start in Gothenburg, which is the heart of Volvo after all. From Gothenburg, we will drive to Stockholm - with a stop here and there where we will tap each other and say how incredibly beautiful it is and then take ridiculous amounts of photos - a tough piece because Gothenburg is the same distance from Stockholm as Amsterdam is from Paris and we won't land until after lunch. But where there's a will, there's literally a way, so we're just going to do this. And we will charge our vehicle in Trosa because if someone tells us that this is also called the Hamptons (the place where rich New Yorkers hang out during the warm summer months) of Sweden, then you have us.
Discovering Stockholm: hotels, islands, and museums
In Stockholm, we book two nights at the Radisson Hotel which may sound a bit business-like, but which - as we've been told - is a comfortable hotel with a view of the Stockholm waters from where boats depart every day towards one of the hundreds of islands near Stockholm. I have been to Stockholm before and am really looking forward to an ‘encore’ because during my previous visit, I didn't manage to go to that amazing Fotografiska Museum, and the list of restaurants I got tipped off by my neighbor who lived in Stockholm for years is considerable. Go ahead and take a screenshot now, because if you are also going to execute your someday-I-will-go-to-Stockholm plan, you want to know this. Miss Voon and Tako (Asian fusion), Sturehof for classic Swedish food, and Riche if you want to visit a real classic.
Road trip tips in Stockholm: shopping and museums
Our program in Stockholm is already quite packed. We will drive to Fotografiska (because that is quite a walk from our hotel and since we are on a Volvo holiday and driving electric, any excuse to leave the car behind is just off the table), shop at NK, that beautiful department store where you trip over designer brands, Biblioteksgatan, Birger Jarlsgatan, or in Mood gallerian. If we have time left, we might also catch the ABBA museum, but a visit to the islands and a little road trip to another place that is a Swedish interpretation of the Cotswolds are also vying for our attention. We decide to see all that on the spot.
Back to Gothenburg: relaxing at the Hjortviken Country Club
Importantly, after two nights in Stockholm, we head towards Gothenburg where we have booked at the Hjortviken Country Club which is the Soho House of Sweden. If we can, we want to spend a few hours by the pool, feeling very much like the Swedes because of our Volvo with Swedish license plates and making everyone in the Netherlands jealous with our Instagram stories with photos that we preferably take at twelve o'clock at night when it will still be light here.
In short, the great excitement has begun and we would love to take you, from a distance but still, along on our journey.
Love, Daan and May
