Young families with children are the most welcome guests in Sweden. The friendly staff at hotels, malls, and entertainment centers are happy to look after your child while dad and mom are busy with boring adult tasks, restaurants and cafes offer appetizing children's menus, and vacations spent at ski resorts in the Scandinavian mountains will lay a solid foundation for developing a taste for outdoor activities and a healthy lifestyle.
Excursion vacations with kids in Sweden are thoughtfully designed. In solid museums, not designed for children's audiences, playrooms with reliable soundproofing are equipped, and animators not only entertain but also teach the younger generation, without descending to lectures and moralizing. For each age group, exciting interactive programs have been developed that facilitate easy learning in a game situation.
Nevertheless, no matter how wonderfully organized children's leisure time is, most parents would still like to be less separated from their son or daughter when they travel. Family vacation in Sweden with children provides an excellent opportunity to establish contact with the child, as there are enough places in the kingdom where it is interesting for both big and small. One example is the Chocolate Museum in Linköping, where mom can treat herself to hot chocolate wraps and a nourishing cocoa butter extract mask while the little one is busy tasting cakes and candies.
Loyal prices for vacations with kids in Sweden are another reason to go as a family. Schoolchildren and pre-schoolers up to the age of 18 are admitted to museums for free or at a substantial discount.
You're extremely lucky if your Swedish vacation with children includes folklore festivals such as Walpurgis Night, Midsummer Festival, St. Lucy's Day, Easter or Christmas festivals. During these times, the Skansen Ethnographic Museum hosts rousing festivals, theatrical performances and folk craft workshops.
For some boyish fun, head to the island of Gotland to the reconstructed Viking village of Futeviken. Here, your son can learn archery, spear throwing, sword and axe fighting, and some girls have a keen interest in warfare.
Most children love animals and enjoy visiting zoos. Representatives of the Scandinavian peninsula fauna can be found in Skåne Zoo, warm-loving guests of the tropics live in the menagerie of the coastal town of Ystad, and rare and endangered species such as river otters, mountain foxes and sea eagles have found refuge in the Nordens Ark Nature Reserve.
Does your little one get upset at the sight of caged animals? Then take a trip to Björnpark Bear Park, Ingelby Moose Park, or Kullaberg Nature Reserve for a dolphin safari on a RIB boat. Swedish zoologists are particularly proud of the Kolmården Safari Park in Grilby: over 700 species of animals are kept in conditions as close to natural as possible. Scientists have worked hard to create a comfortable environment for elephants, giraffes, tigers, lions, and gorillas.
If your child has already read stories by Astrid Lindgren and Tove Jansson, the best children's vacation in Sweden awaits at Junibacken Fairy Tale Museum on the island of Djurgården in Stockholm. Here you will meet your favorite characters - the naughty robber's daughter Roni, Pippi Longstocking, Emil of Lönneberg, Carlson, Madiken, and the Moomin troll family with all the children and household. A glimpse from the journey into the world of childhood will give you a much better understanding of growing up!
Children with artistic inclinations will gain valuable experience at Stockholm's Tom Tits Experiment museum, practicing different genres of visual art. And if you're on vacation in Skåne, take your child to the Fredriksdal Museum, which recreates life on a farm in the pre-industrial era: city kids will benefit from knowing what a freshly plowed field smells like and where milk comes from.
You should take your young inventor to the Universeum Museum of Scientific Discovery and Technology in Gothenburg, where you can perform all kinds of physical and chemical experiments, activate robots, and push all kinds of buttons. In between scientific ones, the child can relax by watching the life of sea creatures in the giant aquarium. A few steps away from the museum complex is the Liseberg amusement park, the largest amusement complex in Scandinavia.
Other amusement parks worth visiting include Stockholm's Gröna Lund, with the world's tallest carousel, Tomteland ("Santa Park") in Mora, and High Chaparral, a theme park inspired by the romance of the Wild West.
