Thanks to one low cost airline last-minute promotion that made me decided to visit Gotland where one of the World Heritage Sites - the Hanseatic Town of Visby, the island's capital, located. Since the visit was really unplanned, I did my best to see the city for one and a half days without knowledge or expectation, but turn out to be one of the best World Heritage Sites of Sweden I visited in this trip. Even with the promotion, our plane still had only 6 passengers! And when we landed on Visby Airport, there was no taxi at all, we tried to ask airport staffs, but no one knew how to call taxi! Luckily that one passenger called a taxi for us from a small phone box at the airport entrance. Finally our taxi arrived and took us to the town center. When our taxi reached the town, the view was quite stunning with high medieval town wall, towers and defensive gates.

After we got a place to sleep, the first place we went was Almedalen, which was a beautiful seaside park. I really liked this place and the view of the town was just amazing, from here I could see many church spires, town wall, and many styles of building architecture. The next place was the Gunpowder Tower which was a tower part of the town wall next to the sea. Then we went to see the Botanical Garden, the garden was lovely with many spring flowers, also many small alleys in this area were very pretty with cute houses. The beach promenade and the northern section of Visby wall were also worth detour, after that we saw many ruins of churches, the only still functioned was the Visby Cathedral; inside the cathedral especially the brass chandelier was quite lovely. The next day we saw the Visby Museum - Fornsalen, the museum had great collection of runic stones and many silver treasures. It also had exhibition about war and armor, we really surprised with the weight of armor that ancient solider had worn.

The rest of the day we explore the town center that full of many styles of buildings, Visby was a treasure box of northern European architectural styles, it was a great surprised to see many styles in such small town and harmoniously integrate in the townscape. We loved the goat statues, the symbol of Gotland that can be found in many places. We also enjoyed food and drink in Visby, the food quality was surprisingly high with interesting fusion of Mediterranean and local ingredients, Gotland blended tea was also nice and perfect for souvenir. We returned Stockholm and really missed our short but happy Gotland experience. Visby maybe not unique as it was quite similar to other Hansa towns; however, it was a great contrast to other Swedish tourist attractions in the mainland and made us felt rewording after explored the place.