A spontaneous trip to Åre – just what we needed!

We took a spontaneous trip!

A spontaneous trip was just what the doctor ordered, if we’d seen a doctor and he said we should go on a spontaneous trip…. yeah! With our summer vacation being over and being back to work while everyone else is having time off kind of sucks, even tho we already had our vacation! The downside of working in an office in the summer is that I’m the only one there and it’s pretty tedious. It kind of made me even more tired then usual, because being able to talk to colleagues makes me stay alert usually.

Anyway, we needed to get out of the apartment this weekend, and we decided to go to Åre, Sweden – a beautiful place 3,5 hours by car up north. A totally spontaneous trip with no plans at all, other then the destination. We got my mother to check up on Marley (our cat) a couple of times and make sure she had food and company, even tho we were only gone for 11 hours we wanted to make sure she wasn’t alone all that time.

We began our journey at 7 in the morning and arrived in Åre around 10.30, and wow…. I hadn’t been there for about 8 years – it looked so different. There were new apartment houses, shops, café’s and restaurants everywhere, it was so cozy and beautiful. We parked our car in the center of town and went to Espresso House to get a Banana Split Frapino, something we have missed a lot moving to the countryside. The nearest speciality coffee shop is pretty far away. That frapino made the whole spontaneous trip worth it alone…. almost, haha!

We walked around town for a bit, checking out all the amazing houses and scenery, before heading to the cabin ski lift… It takes you up the mountain, to the (almost) very top, and the view up there is almost unreal. It is so fantastic and breathtaking, photos don’t give it justice, you have to see for yourself. The only downside with going up the mountain was that we weren’t the only ones with that plan… we had to wait in line for about 40 minutes, but not before buying two tickets, for one ride, for 280 Swedish kronor… which is about 32 USD. A pretty hefty price for one ride. When it was our turn to go in the cabin lift, we had to do so with 69 other people, it got pretty cramped in the cable car and we kind of missed a lot of the view going up.

But getting to the top made it all worth it!

At the top of the mountain there were still some snow left, in July, which is pretty neat. We played around in the snow for a while, took some photos and just stared out over the surrounding mountains taking it all it. Well worth the high ticket price, 40 minute wait and cramped cable car. After about 45 minutes we decided to back down due to some dark clouds heading our way, I only had jeans and a t-shirt on and it was pretty windy. On the way down there were not as many people and we got a window seat so we could look outside and take some more photos. Be sure to check out the gallery below, and follow me on Instagram!

spontaneous trip panorama

Down back in the town we walked around a bit more, checked out the hotel and the surroundings before heading back to the car, we had now been in Åre for about 2.5 hours. Just as we are about to jump in the car I notice a yellow note stuck on the windshield…. a freaking parking ticket, BAH! So, our spontaneous trip now cost us 500 Swedish kronor extra (55 USD), but hey, we had a great time and it was worth it.

We headed on home and got through the front door at around 6 – Marley was happy to see us and wanted fancy food. We drove about 600 kilometers that day and we were pretty tired getting home. But we did decide that we will go one more spontaneous trips like this, it was really fun.

Have you gone on a spontaneous trip? Tell me in the comments!

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