A Sleepy Little Swedish Town

Sunday was scheduled as a full day at sea, but instead we pulled into a very small port, Lysekils, Sweden, right after lunch. This photo shows the first glimpse of Lysekils. As soon as the ship was cleared, a representative from the town came aboard and distributed maps of the village. This turned out to be the case at every single port; a real godsend since most of them were scarcely mentioned in the guidebooks.

Being Sunday, the few shops were closed. The big commercial attraction was an aquarium but we chose to wander around the town instead of paying a visit.

For us, the major attraction was the church, high on the town's main hill. It was fairly warm that day, and we trudged around the cobbly streets until we reached the top, only to find that since we had missed morning services, we could not get inside. Joe tried every possible door, but it was useless. The doors were extremely heavy and made of copper, prompting my sweetheart to say, "Well, nobody's going to nail anything to these church doors!"

We would end up visiting or photographing at least one church at every port stop. The denominations were mostly unclear. We believed that they were initially Roman Catholic, judging from when they were built, but were now Lutheran, representing the state religion.

There wasn't a lot to do in Lysekils, but we didn't care. We enjoyed looking at the homes and I noticed that many of them had large windows without curtains, believing that the inhabitants valued sunlight more than privacy. This was understandable, considering that the latitude in most of Scandinavia led to very, very short days in the winter time. Following are some pictures of the scenery in Lysekils.

Soon it was time to return to the ship for a nap before dinner. After eating, we went back up on the deck for the sail away. Since we were visiting in the summer, the day was long and this photo of sunset was taken well after ten o'clock.