Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Facing the cathedral is the decorated facade of the
Town Hall
(rådhuset)
.
The biggest windows are on the second (middle) floor, where the courts are
located. During the spring (generally May and June), you can duck around
the left side of the Town Hall and poke into its courtyard to see the blooming
“handkerchief tree”
(Davidia involucrata),
whose flowers have hanky-sized
petals.
• From here, you have two options:
Beaches and Parks (East):
Continue straight through Stortorget, and pro-
ceedthreemoreblocksonStorgatan.TheareabeyondÖstraVallgatan(theold
eastern wall of the city) has a pleasant park and small swimming beach. This
area is called Kattrumpan (literally, “cat's rear end”) because of the widely
held and disturbing notion that Kvarnholmen looks like a cat's skin splayed
out. To the left, on a little pier in the water, look for the last remaining
klap-
phus—
laundry building—in Kalmar. In the mid-1800s, four of these small,
wooden structures stood at the seaside. Today the
klapphus
is still occasion-
ally used for washing rugs and carpets; take a peek inside and see if anyone is
at work. Across the water is the island neighborhood of Varvsholmen, which
oncehousedaneyesoreshipyardbuthasbeenconvertedintoafuturisticresid-
ential development. Just for fun, imagine if they did this with the grim indus-
trial zone in your hometown. To the left of Varvsholmen is the sleepy residen-
