Old houses, big city and Bear Island - traveling in Southern Sweden

In the morning, we headed to the open-air museum Vallby, located right in the city of Västerås.

The large parking lot was still quite empty and the entrance to the museum was free.

There was an old marketplace with various houses from Sweden's earlier times.

The small and large wooden houses were dispersed throughout the spacious grounds.

Additionally, there were enclosures with representatives of old domestic animal breeds, which, due to the nice weather today, lay rather lazily in the shade, paying no further attention to the visitors.

Our tour of the grounds was interrupted by a picnic in a hidden, nicely designed garden in the backyard of a house.

We only had to drive a few minutes further until we reached the city center of Västerås.

The city has the largest inland port in the country and even a skyscraper 25 stories high.

We found that the modern city center looks rather dreary.

In the northern district of Kyrkbacken, however, there are still old wooden houses, some of which date back to the 18th century.

During our walk through the streets, the residential area was very quiet and we hardly met any other people.

At the Cathedral, which rises 92 meters higher than the city's skyscraper, it was already a bit more lively.

It towers over the entire city and houses the grave of King Erik XIV, who was eliminated by his own brother with poisoned food.

After our stroll through the city center, we walked back along the riverbank and made our way to the not far distant island of Björnö.

On Björnö, there are many hiking trails and parking areas with beautiful views, from which we chose one by the lake near the end of the road to spend the night.

Our afternoon fika was at a picnic table right by the water.

In the evening, we took a short hike through the woods and meadows, where we also saw deer grazing at some distance from the path, but otherwise they did not mind us.