When traveling, I take great pleasure reading books set in the iconic spots I'm visiting: "Crime and Punishment" in St. Petersburg, for example, or "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" in Paris.
So there I sat in Fjallbacka, Sweden, thumbing through "The Ice Princess" while surveying the town from atop towering Vetterberget hill. Fjallbacka? "The Ice Princess"?
I was in the tiny western Swedish port at the invitation of Visit Sweden, reading one of the latest in a slew of Scandinavian crime novels. For all the joys of Stockholm, the tourist board is eager to promote charming West Sweden, the coastal region surrounding the country's second-largest city, Goteborg.
Local novelist Camilla Lackberg sets her thrillers in Fjallbacka, her hometown and a charming holiday spot long popular with Swedes.
It was also the second stop, and the literary highlight, in my self-drive south from Tanumshede -- site of Unesco-protected, prehistoric petroglyphs -- to Goteborg, a prosperous, bustling seaport famed for seafood and sightseeing.
Guided by my trusty GPS, I left Fjallbacka and navigated bucolic byways farther south to Lyckorna, home to 14-room pension and restaurant Villa Sjotorp.
Before bedding down in my cozy, circa-1901 digs with bay views, I enjoyed a 100% organic dinner of marinated beef carpaccio with goat's milk cream, an ox steak drizzled in burgundy sauce and chilled rhubarb soup with strawberries by chef and proprietor Ellika Mogenfelt.
The next morning I drove south to the island of Tjorn to visit Pilane, a modern sculpture park on the grounds of an Iron Age burial site, and the small, seaside Nordic Watercolor Museum, where I had a light lunch after trolling the easily digested galleries.
Next stop: yet another island, Kladesholmen, to check into Salt & Sill, a modern, dockside hotel-restaurant floating on pontoons. Before supper, I strolled over to the town's quaint, kitschy Herring Museum.
On my final day, I ferried it to the island of Marstrand to tour monolithic, 17th century Carlsten Fortress before returning my rental car in bustling Goteborg.
See www.vastsverige.com/en/west-sweden and www.visitsweden.com.