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Sweden in the Fall

I found tickets for extremely cheap. The problem was that they were for 2 weeks away, which was October! After doing research (and buying the tickets haha) I realized that October did NOT seem like the best time to go.

Winter is the best time to see the Northern Lights and participate in all of the winter activities (dog sledding, ice climbing, etc).

Summer is the best time to have 24 hours of daylight and experience all of the amazing outdoor opportunities and friendly social gatherings.

I was worried October would be freezing and rainy every day.

Luckily, I was wrong. 

 We stayed in the bottom half of Sweden and were there the first two weeks of October, 2021.

Here are some of my favorite pictures from our trip: 

There are castles everywhere!
This free botanical garden in Gothenburg (the second biggest city in Sweden) is probably the prettiest botanical garden I have ever been to. We were there for 3 hours and didn't see it all!
The leaves were prime when we first got there, and had almost all fallen by the time we left, 10 days later!
Most days I wore a sweater with no coat. It was good to have layers, though!
This is a great time of year to explore Sweden's 30 FREE National Parks!
The charming vines on buildings are my favorite. Stockholm is a great place to see cobblestone streets with climbing vines and learn about nordic history!
Some of the days were pretty chilly, but we never saw snow. Even when it rained, it was fairly light, and usually at night or early morning.
I found that most of the leaves were red, rather than orange or yellow! Especially the leaves on vines!
We tried to spend as much time outside as possible, but sometimes we just wanted to be comfy. Stockholm has the coolest children's library that I have ever seen with books in 30 different languages!
Many people ride their bikes as a main form of transportation, all year.
The beaches were chilly, but still beautiful. Sunsets and sunrises were incredible!
Warm and yummy food helped us when we were feeling chilly, tired, or missing long days of sun!

In summary, I am so grateful we went when we did.  You cannot beat $301 tickets to Sweden, and it was so cool to go without running into a single other American tourist!  

I am always a fan of “now rather than later”. 

It’s possible I could’ve had a better experience doing a week-long dog sledding trip in the Lapland area in January, and seen the Northern Lights. 

It is possible that I would have enjoyed 24 hours of sunlight and swimming in the Baltic sea with other vacationers more. 

But we went in October and there were some definite benefits.  

There is always another trip, and I like that we went when we did.  

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